This is something I wrote a year ago for an OC idea I developed. It's nothing super finished but I find it adorable and want to share it otherwise it'll be forgotten on my hard drive. Check out the bab on my deviantArt or tumblr.

Also I always appreciate a review - you don't even need an account for that. *blink blink*

.oOo.

"Guys! Get in here!"

The three summoned brothers stormed into the laboratory simultaneously, all on high alert from Donatello's urgent call.

"What is it?" taking the lead, Leonardo immediately demanded. The three brothers crowded up to the fourth one who was standing and leaning over the basket where the last remaining egg was still kept warm by a heat lamp. They'd almost forgotten about it by then. Had it grown moldy by then?

No answer was needed from Donnie as an almost silent but alarming crackle reached the rest of the brothers' ears.

"It's hatching!?" whispered Leo in disbelief as they all bundled even closer, eyes wide in surprise and sudden anticipation.

After already the third egg had been pronounced dead, the three older brothers already came to the conclusion that Baxter Stockman's messed up experiment wasn't meant to be a success. They left the smallest of the eggs under a heat lamp only to avoid an argument with Michelangelo who was remaining hopeful even when all logic and science was against him …and was now gaping at the egg with a slowly growing grin.

"Amazing right!? A successful genetic offspring of two separate species! One of which is a mutated turtle! A humanoid turtle and –and-! What was it again? A Tuatara! A hybrid of two species with so little genetic similarities has never made it past an embryo!-

"Shush!" Raphael elbowed Donatello's arm to stop the excited scientist's blue streak of words that was usually only seen as annoying by the other brother but he felt was entirely unwanted at this moment too.

Donatello shut up but he didn't let the gesture change his mood as he refocused to observing the twitching egg with astonishment.

Curiosity and anticipation thickened the air around them while they waited silently.

The pips on the eggshell grew slowly into cracks until a small chip was separated after a couple long minutes. Another nudge from inside split the chip away and after several repeats the inner membrane finally tore and a tiny green hand struck out of the created hole.

Everyone gawked at the revealed appendage.

A small green paw with four short tiny fingers and hooked claws the size of toothpick ends wavered in the air for a good second before retreating back out of sight.

They were aware of what was happening before them but until actually seeing part of the living being with their very eyes, the brothers had been stuck in a loop that, thinking back at it now, felt like an oddly easily accepted dream. But this was a real living breathing baby, Leo was struck with the realization like a well-deserved slap.

"So tiny!" Mikey finally gasped.

"Donnie, whose is it?"

"Huh?" the purple clad turtled tore his gaze from the hidden abnormality.

"The egg – the DNA. Whose is it?"

Raphael's head also turned towards the tallest brother at the repeated question while Michelangelo, oblivious, continued to observe the cracked egg, trying to get a peek into the small hole.

"I couldn't find out because the egg shells are artificial and don't carry the correct DNA structure. And the data I managed to skim through before wiping Stockman's computers clean and destroying the lab was just which animals Stockman tried to- err- crossed our DNA with.

"He used one species of each Reptilia class extant orders— or in the snakes and lizards case: suborders —excluding Testudines and Aves, I mean, turtles and birds. He somehow obtained the DNA of a saltwater crocodile, a Komodo dragon, a reticulated python and a tuatara. I didn't learn anything about whose DNA he crossed with which animal. Assuming that he assigned each one of us only"—

"Why is nothing happening?" Mikey's whine interrupted Donatello's unending explanation.

All three turned towards the youngest leaning close over the basket.

"What do you mean?" Donnie leaned closer for inspection as well.

"The egg hasn't moved since he made the little hole."

Donatello observed the still egg as his brain searched through his memory of all the articles and documentaries he had gone through after they brought the four eggs home… "Hatching is a slow tiring process. It must probably be exhausted."

Mikey's baby blue eyes widened in exaggeration, hitting close to horror. "We need to help him!" He reached in to scrape another chip from the small hole.

"No, Mikey, you can't intervene with natural sele"— The dirty look Donnie received shut him right up and made him reconsider his words. There was nothing natural about this. Even more importantly, what was inside might not have been any less human than them. If anything, it should have been expected of them to help. —"Wait! Be gentle! Let me do it."

Mikey reluctantly stepped aside and let the doctor through.

Raph patted his baby brother's shell. "Not everyone's cut out to be a midwife, Mikey," he grinned.

But the smug smile was cut short when Donatello grumbled a response. "Although one of us is going to have to get ready for parenthood."

The other three brothers' eyes simultaneously widened but none of them said a word, focusing on trying to wrap their mind around another fact they had somehow missed until then.

"Mikey, bring me the tweezers from the shelf over the computer desk. The un-pointy ones."

"Aye aye, Doc!" The youngest brother was gone and back in a matter of seconds, already knowing where half of Donatello's tools were stashed. "What now?"

"Now you can leave because this is going to take a while."

After a long moment of hesitation the three brothers dripped out of the lab one by one.

Michelangelo rolled over the couch and pulled a game controller into his lap, ready to leave to another reality for a while. Leonardo followed him but stopped when he heard Raphael attack the punching dummy with more force than was necessary.

"What's up?" he asked his steaming brother.

"Just punching!"

Leo slowly crossed his arms over his plastron and stared incredulously.

Raph growled. "We should have just destroyed those eggs together with the place when there was nothing inside them yet!"

"Dude!" Mikey uttered disapprovingly from where he was still sitting on the couch but had already abandoned the videogame to listen to their conversation.

Leo recrossed his arms, adapting his annoying posture for another annoying life lesson, Raph thought as his eyes narrowed and he waited for the inevitable.

"I know we haven't asked for a lot of things that still happened to us, Raph. But we'll all need to take responsibility"—

"Oh no, I'm not going to be responsible for that thing! This is Stockman's mess! We should just give the dumb egg back to him to deal with! And when it grows into whatever ugly mindless monster, we'll just kick its butt like always and call it a day!"

"Sounds to me like you're scared."

"Well, you sound like you got stung by that mutant wasp again!" he barked back and ended the conversation with that because he immediately stomped away towards their bedrooms.

"Classic Raph," Mikey commented while Leonardo dropped on the couch beside him with a frustrated sigh.

"This is serious, Mikey. That egg holds a little baby."

"I know! It's awesome!"

"We— Mikey —we're going to have a little baby to take care of. One of us is practically its father. This isn't something any of us should take lightly …or ignore," he ended, looking in Raphael's direction with a frown. "We don't know the first thing about taking care of babies."

"Well Dee's smart and you had tea time with that little girl once. We have nothing to worry about."

Leo needed a second to recollect his thoughts and not lose his patience with the youngest brother. Mikey often needed more time to wrap his mind over a new problem. "Are you not worried about being a dad?"

"Pff… I'm not gonna be a dad. I'm gonna be the fun uncle."

"And how do you know that?" Leo's eye ridges rose in amusement.

"I have a gut feeling, bro. Never mistrust your gut feeling."

"And what else is your gut feeling telling you?"

"That the dad's gonna be the best suitable one of us, so we shouldn't worry too much."

So Mikey's relying on his stomach, Leo thought. He was positive none of them were cut out for parenting, let alone prepared for it.

"So who?"

"I don't know. Donnie?"

"Donnie currently thinks we're in a genetics lab wonderland. I don't think he's built for parenting at all."

"Then you?"

"What? No! It's not going to be me. At least I don't want it to be."

"But you're a born mother hen slash stickler for the rules. That's parent and teacher material right here."

Leonardo showed his brother an unappreciative frown before cupping his face in his hands. Why was he right? But that still didn't prove who the biological father was. "Well whoever's DNA the baby has, he'll have to take the dad title. As for the rest, we'll help equally."

"It takes a village to raise a child."

Leonardo smirked. "Look at little Splinter Junior."

"I think we all know who that title belongs to, bro," Michelangelo grinned back.

The heavy laboratory door slid open and pulled both brothers to their feet. Donatello walked outside with empty hands but a content expression that eased the two.

"So?" Leonardo asked while the tallest took a seat between them.

"It'll hatch when it'll be ready."

"I thought you were gonna help it hatch?!" Mikey piped up.

"I cracked the shell in what is called a 'zip' and moistened the membrane with a warm towel so it wouldn't dry out. I practically did ninety-eight percent of the steps for it. All it needs to do now is equivalent to opening a door."

"Babies can't open doors, genius," the youngest deadpanned.

Donnie frowned. "It needs to come out on its own, Mikey. And don't worry, it will. I felt it start shifting just when I finished."

Leonardo quickly redirected the conversation before Michelangelo could complain onward. "Did you take a DNA sample?"

"Like I said, I didn't actually open the egg, so no."

"What about the other three eggs? Whose DNA was in those?"

"I wouldn't get any satisfaction from prodding smelly rotten eggs," he said with a wrinkled snout. "We threw them out, remember? Which, thinking back at it now, was pretty morbid."

"We didn't think there was ever anything inside them back then. This is still all a shock to me," Leonardo admitted.

"There probably still wasn't. I assumed this one was going to grow moldy just like the rest. I almost forgot about it until I heard it cracking earlier."-

"So what happened?" a mumble reached the group and they all turned around.

"That was an ultra short brood, dude. It hasn't even been ten minutes," Mikey pointed out as Raphael already rejoined the conversation with a hanging head.

"I'm not feeling any happier if that's what you're wondering," he grumbled and flopped onto his beanbag. "I just feel I should be aware of whatever plan you're gonna go with in case you decide on something stupid."

Leo smiled slightly. "Glad to at least hear that."

"Whatever." Raph crossed his arms and scowled at the floor. He didn't stay still for long when the silence after his last word stretched. He shifted. "So what's the plan?" he asked to pull the attention off himself.

Leo straightened up where he was sitting and sandwiched his clasped hands between his knees. "I was thinking along the lines of 'the biological father takes the dad title'?"

"Sounds reasonable enough," Donnie nodded. "I'm kinda scared to do a DNA test to be honest. – ' Congratulations, you're the father! Here's your baby!'" he shouted in mock excitement. – "Is no one else freaked out by that?"

The pale faces from Leo and Raph confirmed it.

.

.

.

"Wait! Did it hatch already?"

"Any moment probably."

"Then why are we outside here?"

.

.

.

"You guys should all go disinfect your hands. Dirty hands don't get to hold the baby."

"I didn't see you wash your hands?"

"I work in a lab, Leo. I do it as often as I can. I washed them the moment I saw the egg twitch."

.

.

.

"Who wants to see the baby?"

"Stop calling it that. It freaks me out," Raph protested.

"Do you prefer Stockman's cloning experiment?" Donatello deadpanned. "Is that less freaky for you?" His frown immediately disappeared when he returned his attention to the basket.

The other three brothers stopped midway to the basket, when they saw him carefully scooping something into his hands, then proceeded more carefully and attentively.

.

.

.

"It's so small!" Mikey whispered. "Kinda looks like Raph."

"Shut up!" Raph scowled at his little brother before those same eyes filled with panic at the sight of the little creature. "No it doesn't," his voice reached a pitch a bit too high.