Donatello fights only when it was necessary.

He was never the most physically aggressive one like his brothers. As a child, Donnie was the last of the turtle brothers to actually get into learning the art of ninjutsu from Splinter. He preferred books and machineries, only joining his brothers for the training drills when one of them dragged him to. The physical exercises were sometimes a bore to him, simply because his mind was always elsewhere, wondering, thinking, inventing. He would dutifully finish all the exercises and katas because he had to, and the sooner he finished them, the faster he can get to whatever his brain was occupied with at the time.

As they grew older, Donnie understood that martial arts was just as important as every other knowledge he sought, especially in trying to keep up with three brothers who were a handful in themselves, not to mention holding his own in front of so many enemies wanting to destroy or use them. But he never liked it, his pacifist nature often objecting to bringing his enemies down by a crack on their skull or a slash across the bodies. It was one of the reasons why he was best at the bo staff, a weapon that could bring an enemy down with the least amount of physical damage, if used properly.

For Donnie, the best combat is the one of the mind, using intelligence to parry their enemies and solving conflicts through knowledge. Taking down a whole army of savage half-mutants would be easier if they found antidotes to restore them into their former self rather than stab them through the flesh. He views conflicts the same way he views most of his world – a puzzle that needs to be resolved, but not necessarily with violence.

It was one of the reasons why he was best at the bo staff, for it was a weapon that can bring his opponents down with the less amount of physical damage. The very first stance with a bo was one of defence – holding it before him like a shield and as a warning to their opponents. And that was how Donnie perceived physical fights – only as a form of defense for himself and for his family, not as the solution to a conflict. A weapon should only be wielded for opponents who presented immediate danger, who would not understand nor listen to reason, and even so, Donnie wielded his own only so they would no longer be a threat. If a mutual agreement or understanding could be achieved even in the eye of a battle, Donnie would be relieved to put his weapon down.

Donatello fights only when it is necessary, when he or his family is in mortal peril, or when he knew that it was not a battle that can be resolved in peace.


Michelangelo fights for fun.

For him, it was simply playtime, a means to exercise his endless unbridled energy and have fun. Perhaps it had to do with growing up with three older brothers who indulged him in their own ways, but Mikey had never been one to take fights seriously. Even with Raph, who often looked and sound like he would murder Mikey on the spot every day during training, Mikey knew he would never mean it – not literally anyway.

Growing up, Mikey had enthusiastically joined the ninjutsu lessons because he thought the jumping around and backflipping from wall to wall had been cool, and he wanted to look cool like Sensei and Leo – who by then was starting to master the basics well enough. Mikey admitted he was never good at the more serious aspects of ninjutsu – like Katas and meditation for internal strength and whatnot. But he managed to keep up with his brothers on the areas that he was good at – the backflips and ducking away from blows and frog-jumping over someone's shoulder or flying through the air to sidekick someone. His martial arts was never going to be the pure style of ninjutsu, that at some point Master Splinter quietly gave up trying to make Mikey do so – instead choosing to leave that to Leo to educate his brother instead.

As they grew older and began to face serious threats, Mikey never let the danger get in the way of his sense of fun. Of course he knew that the Purple Dragons would slash him into half if he let them, but they were easy to beat and he might as well have some fun with it. Plus it would be funnier if he could give Hun a wedgie in the middle of such an intense atmosphere, rather than simply knock him out with his nunchakus. Plus years of sparring with Raph made him realized that if he cracks jokes or laughed or taunted his opponents, he had a fifty percent chance of disarming them before he even delivered the blows. Mind was the strongest weapon, Sensei had reminded them countless times, and while Mikey could not say that his mind is the strongest among his brothers – at the very least, he know how to play with his opponent's minds that way. And that should count for something, right?

Speaking of weapons, he was glad to have a pair of nunchakus as his weapon, as it fitted his fighting style brilliantly. Its lack of sharp edges allowed him to be playful with it without accidentally losing his fingers or cutting someone's head, but it was still dangerous enough to allow him to land aggressive blows whenever he wanted. Plus its small, foldable nature did not get in the way of his agility.

Of course Mikey knew whenever their battles were serious ones, more serious than others anyway. Shredder's fights were always dangerous, and it was no laughing matter if one of his brothers were in near-fatal situations. He may laugh less in those fights, but that doesn't change his fun style of combat. To him, it made sense to combine ninjutsu and the things that made him who he is – the acrobatics and gymnastics and the semi-dancing. It allowed him to think less of his movements when he just flew around naturally as that, as he knew that unlike Donnie, he was never really a thinker. It was best to just let everything go with the flow, even in a fight.

Michelangelo fights as if everything was a game, because his easygoing nature makes it easy if he thinks it was fun.


Raphael fights for his peace of mind.

He was their resident hot tempered turtle, it was tried and true. He could never pinpoint why the real reason he was always angry. He could easily said it had to do with growing up with three brothers, all of which had the knack to get on his nerves in their own individual ways. Perhaps it had to do with the realization that due to his physical appearance, he will never have what others would call a "normal" life. He would never be able to exist anywhere beyond the shadows, will have few friends outside his own family and may never do things human usually do, like travel or get married (not that he wanted to, but it will be nice to have that option). Perhaps it was the fact that they are faced with danger at least twice a week- if it's not the Shredder, it will be the Dragons, or the Triceratons or that goddamned Agent Bishop. Every week seemed to present a new challenge for Raph and his brothers that sometimes he wondered why he could still sleep with his eyes closed.

Sometimes Raph felt that his anger came from a place where fear mixes with frustration. He gets out of his mind with worry whenever Mikey or Donnie wandered off on their own, doing whatever their shell-brains wanted to do, and then he gets frustrated when Leo was on his case for wandering off (which was actually really justified but Raph would rather eat his sais than admit it out loud). He feared the day when one of his family would be taken away by their enemy, but at the same time furious that said enemies were targeting his family in the first place.

All the stress coming from all kinds of corners could get to a turtle, and he could always feel his insides boil almost on a daily basis. He shouts and yells whenever he could, and took out his frustration on the punching bag as fast as he could mend them (or when Donnie could find him a new one), but sometimes even those were not enough. Taking out the whole bulk of his anger at the unfairness of the world on one of his brothers or his father was out of the question – though they did bore a fair share of its brunt. He needed to get physical, to hit something, to feel the crack of something beneath his fist. It was part of the reason why he was so good with sais in the first place. He was never really that good with long-range weapons the way it was so natural for Leo and even Donnie, but arm-to-arm combat was what he was best at. Straightforward fist on fist action, rather than mind games or whatever else.

In a twisted way, taking out Foot Soldiers or Purple Dragon henchmen was like therapy for him. They were the bad guys, plain and simple, so he didn't really have that guilty feeling of punching the living daylights out of them, or roundhouse kicking them to oblivion. In some ways, taking down the bad guys allowed him to vent out his frustration and resentment. Donnie said it was the adrenaline pumping out that made him felt that good after a fight. Whatever it was, it does helped Raph clear his mind and check his temper with those that mattered to him the most. It prevented him from being a monster with his brothers the way he was always terrified he would be, and allowed him to channel his rage to what seemed like the best outlet.

Raph was always the one who bore the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he fights to let some of that burden out of his system.


Leonardo fights for the right thing.

One of the first things taught by Master Splinter in their ninjutsu lessons was the Bushido Code – The "Warrior Way". The Code defined him in every way, just as being the big brother in his little family of mutants did. He strived to live with the ethics and ideals presented in the code, and thus held a sense of honour more rigid than those of his brothers. This sense of honour was what drove him to ensure that every fight had a purpose as true as possible, to be certain that every battle he lead was for the right reasons.

It was the sense of honour that made him careful with every wave of his katanas, just as it was when he directed his brothers on any mission. It was important to him that they played their parts in the right way and for the right reasons, to avoid causing a damage so great that it would take a lifetime to undo. He wanted to be worthy of the title "ninja", to be able to uphold the name with honour, rather than be ashamed of it because of some guilt that will for certain nag the back of his mind. He wanted to be able to come home after every mission being able to look his father in the eyes and told him honestly that they had successfully done something right that day.

Sometimes the right thing was not so black and white, and those were the times that Leo dreaded the most. Having to work with Bishop, a man he despised and one whom had threatened his brother and friend in two separate times, screamed all sorts of warning bells in Leo's mind. But he had to do it for the sake of another brother, trapped in a mindless monster none of them recognized and a danger to himself and those around him. Leo had to arrange his mind to remember that saving Donnie was the right thing, the only thing, to do at the moment and he was willing to pay any price for that. The thought scared him a little, but only a little, because nothing is more right to Leo than keeping his family safe and together.

Perhaps it was the sense of honour that was also the reason why Leo strived to see the good in everyone, even those who had shown to be a danger to him and his family in the past. This sense of honour was what halted him from finishing Traximus in the arena, although his victory would have provided easy exit for him and his brothers. It stayed his blades from finishing his evil clone, Dark Leo, when he saw the turtle walked directly into the line of fire to save Cody Jones. It was what made him tried to reason with Dark Leo, to try to turn him for good. Raph often called this move naïve, but Leo felt that sometimes the right thing to do isn't always to raise their weapons, but to see beyond the surface and understand others, even if they were enemies before, even if there was a chance that they would be enemies again.

Master Splinter had told him, when he received his weapon, that the katanas were the weapons of warriors of old times, and their spirit can only match the one within its wielder. Leo meant that his blades to represent honour and virtue, the true spirit of a ninja and the righteous path of a warrior