The Saga of the Next Generation - Red Turtle

A/N: I know that its suppose to be Romea's turn, but, we discussed it and decided that Julian was going to tell this part. There's a 90 chance that Romea will be the conclusion of the story.

And, um, I, eh...I still like reviews, you know. Just so you all are aware. Cause I'd like to know if people are still reading and did any new people hook into it? Stuff like that. Also its hard for the author to objectively review their own writing. I know character death can be rough, and some people might not be able to handle it, but, if you all are still with me, This story shall not end in utter tragedy.

And now for...

Julian:

My past family is really quite awesome.

I never thought about it before, but they had to be some bad-ass ninja's just to get by in this country. And they grew up with just each other against the whole world.

No wonder Uncle Leo (Rest In Peace) was always stressing family. And no wonder Romea and I stressed him out so much, because we didn't understand family. We had eachother, and that was good enough. In our world, Uncle Leo used to take us aside and lecture us about being role models and looking out for our younger brother and cousins, and we would generally roll our eyes until he went away.

And for the longest time he would give me lectures about being nice to Chris, that Chris was practically my brother and he and I had to be able to count on each other. For the beginning part of my childhood Chris and I were the only turtles, and I think Uncle Leo wanted us to bond the way he and my father did. He worked very hard trying to create that bond. He would take us to museums and fairs for the purpose of giving us common experiences. Romea wasn't mainly included in these excursions, I guess having a fox-sister didn't quite fit into his vision, and she was more interested in hanging out with Mom anyway. It was three years before even the twins were born, and another five before my own brother was born or most of the other family. So for a while Chris and I were the main focus for Uncle Leo.

These outings were very important to Uncle Leo, but ultimately they didn't work. Chris and I were never going to be as close as our fathers, partly because we didn't have to be. In our time we could go to school and have friends and all kinds of things I took for granted until I really saw how our fathers had to live.

By the time Chris was thirteen, and I was twelve, we knew that we weren't going to be friends. But we continued the ritual of letting Uncle Leo take us places and talk about how important brothers (or cousins) were.

This came to an end when he took us to see a movie about some superheroes saving Earth from these really, really cool badguys. I cheered for the bad guys, and when I got back home I told Romea how great they were, and together we went out and bought some toys and a poster. In retaliation Chris bought toys and a poster of the superhero guy. Somehow this simple act became a rivalry, escalating to Romea and I dressing up like the bad guys and drawing their symbol on all of our notebooks and everything else, including the bathroom mirror after my shower.

Uncle Leo took me aside and told me that I needed to appreciate Chris more, that he was right about this matter.

Of course that just made things worse. Soon Romea and I were taking up every bad guy we saw on television and teasing Chris about it.

Chris began reciting the superhero's mantra before we ate dinner.

So I finally took it upon myself to fling my mashed potatoes at him.

Now, of course all the adults were shocked at my actions. I was even a little shocked myself. And I knew I was going to be in trouble for it.

I thought my Dad was going to yell at me, ground me for a month. My mom was probably going to give me an "I'm disappointed in you" lecture.

But instead it was Uncle Leo who pulled me out of the dining room.

"Julian, this has to stop, you can't be a bad guy any longer."

"Why not?" I asked, in my twelve-year-old smart ass way.

He took out his sword and pinned me to the wall.

"Because we're the good guys, and we kill bad guys", he told me.

I didn't have any smart-ass comments for that. But I thought it he was whack, you know. I thought he was crazy. I just stopped talking to him at all after that.

Here, in this setting, Uncle Leo makes sense.