"If we're right," Leonardo said, "you're embodied here twice. Once in this form, and once in a turtle form, which is trapped here because it doesn't have a physical body to return to. That's Donatello. We need to find him."
"How do we do that?" David asked.
Leo shifted. Splinter had drilled into him that plans never survived first contact with reality, and apparently they didn't survive first contact with the mystical either. "I was hoping you would know," he said awkwardly.
David gave him a scathing look.
Leo rubbed his eyes with two fingers. "Okay. You can't find him because you don't have a connection to him. That's why we're here." He looked up. "Raph, can you find him?"
"I dunno," Raph said. "Can we meditate here?"
"Not really," Leo said.
David rolled his eyes and walked away.
"Let's think about this," Leo said, raising his voice. David was going to stay in the loop on this whether he liked it or not. "Raph, you know Donatello. Where would he be?"
Raph moved his mouth silently as he thought. "Well, he's a turtle, right? He'd be in the ocean."
"He would not," David said loudly. He was faced away from them, poking at his spirit body again, and Leo didn't want to know exactly what he was up to. "If Donatello is my turtle soul, he would be a red-eared slider. They're pond turtles, not sea turtles. They don't live in the ocean."
"No, I think Raph is onto something," Leo said. "The spirit plane isn't that literal, David. In the real world some turtles might be found in ponds, but astrally, all turtles are connected to the sea. It's where their spirits come from."
"You get more ridiculous every time you open your mouth," David said.
"Anyway," Raph said, "how do we get to the ocean?" He glanced around. "I don't see no beach here."
"Astral travel," Leo said. He looked at his other brother. "David."
David groaned, but Leonardo's commanding tone proved to work even on those who had not been trained to respond to it. He came back and stood at Leo's side.
Leo gestured for Raph to come to his opposite side. One and then the other, he took their hands.
"See the ocean before you," he said, squaring his shoulders and staring straight ahead. "You can sense the humidity, the cooler temperature coming off the water. Feel the sand under your feet. Follow the rhythm of the waves. You are home. You are home. You are home.
"Now," he said, "yearn for the sea."
He couldn't believe it worked. He had always considered memorizing the sayings of the old masters to be a less valuable aspect of his training, but maybe Master Splinter was onto something after all.
He had his doubts about the true provenance of some of the quotes he had learned, including the one he had just called upon. But if they worked, maybe it didn't matter who first said them.
And this one, it was clear, had worked. There was the ocean, just as he had imagined it, and there were his brothers, staring in wonder.
Slowly, gently, he let go of their hands.
"I can't believe that worked," David said.
"You just have to know what you're doing," Leo said. He turned down the beach. "Let's go."
Leo reveled in movement as they walked. His body felt perfect, and he wondered whether his brothers were having the same experience of their spirit forms. Before he could ask, Raph brought up the question from his own unique angle.
"So why do you look exactly the same as in real life?" Raph asked him. David had gone ahead a little, fascinated by everything he saw and seemingly much less intimidated by nature when it was only the embodiment of spiritual resonances.
"Because that's what having a good mind-body connection means," Leo said, keeping his eyes trained ahead. "Seeing yourself as you really are."
"I thought having a good mind-body connection meant you didn't trip over your own feet," Raph said, his huge arms swinging at his sides as he leaned over to carry on the half-whispered conversation.
"No, that's spatial awareness," Leo said.
"I thought spatial awareness was when you didn't get lost," Raph said.
"No, that's spatial reasoning."
Raph snorted. "You got an answer for everything, don'tcha?"
"Yes."
Raph jogged ahead and poked David in the back, causing him to jump and squirm. "Got a question for you," he said.
"What?" David's voice carried on the metaphysical breeze, and he didn't sound like he was interested in whatever Raph wanted to ask him.
"Why do you look like a girl?" Raph asked, undeterred.
"I don't look like a girl."
"No?" Raph reached out and tugged on a hank of David's hair. "What's this?"
David whirled and slapped Raph's hand, a move that turned out to be much more effective on the astral plane than it would have been in real life. Raph drew back, stung. "Knock it off," David snapped, and he stormed towards the distant rock outcropping that had been looming in front of them as they walked.
"What's his problem?" Raph asked, as Leo moved past him, pushing through the soft sand.
Leo ignored the question, quickly catching up to his other brother. "David."
"Leave me alone," David said. "My human body sucks too, okay? I get it."
Leo caught David's arm, turned him around, and looked him in the face.
"You look like your mom," he said quietly, after a long minute.
David looked at the ground. "They could make me look like anything," he said, so softly Leo could barely hear him. "With the gene therapy, I mean. Why wouldn't I ask to look like a leading man? But… it's not me."
Leo didn't say anything.
"I - I need some time," David said. "Like you said, if I still look like this when we're done here, then I should get the surgery. I don't want to look for Donatello right now. I just want to sit with this body."
Leo let David go, and sat. In a minute, his brother sat too, and then Raph came and loomed over them.
"What are you doing?"
"Sitting," Leo replied.
"That gonna help?" Raph asked.
"This is David's journey," Leo said, straightening his pose and looking out over the water. "If he wants to sit, then that's exactly what we should be doing."
Raph grunted, but sat down, settling his bulk in the sand.
David half-turned away from them, and as Leo watched from the corner of his eye, he examined his hands. Then he felt his face, mostly around the nose and ears. Then he played with his hair. Then he took his shoes off and looked at his toes. And then, very gingerly, he reached under his shirt and ran a thumb up his spine.
"What do you think?" Leo asked, when David seemed to be done.
"It's… not what I imagined," David said, and Leo thought that something changed about his spirit guise, though he couldn't say what it was.
They sat.
"I don't think he's waiting for us," David said.
Leo glanced at him. "Hm?"
"Donatello. I don't think he's lying on the beach somewhere waiting for us." David straightened his shoes and put them at his side. "If I've disowned him, if he has nothing to do with me anymore…" He gestured to the ocean. "I think he's out there somewhere, just being a turtle."
"Makes sense to me," Raph said.
Leo nodded. "Then let's go swimming."
They waded into the warm water. David had taken off his shirt, but had refused to remove his pants, a point on which Leo was all too glad not to argue with him. Willingly, he followed them into the water, and they dove.
Within seconds, Leo felt a pull on his hand. He glanced back, puzzled. David was struggling in his grip, thrashing his legs and jerking his head.
Raph was looking too, and in a smooth motion they kicked upward and pulled their brother to the surface.
David gasped for air and threw himself at Leo, hanging from his shoulder and panting. "I - I can't swim," he managed, confirming Leo's fears. "I can't hold my breath."
"Are you sure?" Leo asked. He held his brother's narrow waist securely, and treaded water for both of them. "You're not just panicking?"
David shook his head vehemently, his wet hair hitting Leo in the face with surprising force. "I'm human. I can't."
"Okay." Leo's instinct was to rub David's back, but he sensed how intensely uncomfortable that would be for his brother right now. "Okay. Breathe, David."
David gagged on air as Leo rolled onto his back and swam towards the shore.
"You'll be okay here?" he asked, as David collapsed into the sand next to his shoes.
"Y-yeah," David said, but Leo still took a good look around for any malevolent spirits that might be trying to move in. David was distressed and vulnerable, easy prey for a lost soul.
Easy, he hoped, for Donatello to reunite with.
"Let's go," he said to Raph, and then they were in the water again, gliding into the depths.
The water was so clear as to be disorienting - Leo reached out to touch a guiding hand to the bottom, only to realize it was many feet below him. If there was any other big turtle out here, he wouldn't be hard to see.
Their dive-sign, the way they communicated with each other while swimming, didn't include a word for call him - such a concept would normally have been nonsensical underwater - but Leo tried to convey as much to Raph, and Raph seemed to understand.
It was a shadow first, a blurry darkening of the crystal blue. But as it came closer, Leo could make out the flippers and the broad shell, and then the sharp beak and the mottled green pattern: a quintessential sea turtle.
Not for the first or even second time that day, he thought to himself: I can't believe that worked.
Or worked partially, at least. Leo was still figuring out how to convey to the turtle spirit that they would be honored if it would follow them, when Raph simply put out a hand, laid his palm on the turtle's beak, and then turned and swam away with the spirit following sedately behind.
Leo had seen a lot of things in his life, but this was possibly the most incredible: Raphael, the recalcitrant meditator, leading their brother's spirit home.
As they neared the shore, the bottom rose up to meet them. Raph swung his feet down and walked out of the surf, encouraging Donatello to drag his massive body up the beach. As Leo rose from the water, he saw David watching anxiously.
"Is that him?" Without waiting for an answer, David climbed to his feet and stumbled towards them through the loose sand. He sank to his knees again below the surf line, not caring that the waves splashed up around him.
Donatello stopped, looking up at David, not seeming inclined to move any further.
Leo knelt beside them. "Is this what you want?" he asked.
David reached out a hand, then pulled it back. "I - I don't know." He closed his eyes. "Going swimming with you guys was amazing, but… being able to do that means giving up going to college, having a job, having a life…" He rubbed his forearm across his eyes. "I don't know what to do."
Donatello blinked his huge eyes slowly, then stretched his neck to the side, dug his flippers into the sand, and began to turn around.
"Wait -" David held out his hand again, though he still didn't touch the turtle. "Leo, what do I do? If I don't want to let him go, that means I want him back, right?" His voice was rising in anguish. "It makes no rational sense to want to be a mutant turtle. What's wrong with me?" His skin rippled, the edges of his body flickering.
"What's happening?" Raph, who had been standing back, dropped to David's side. "Leo, what is this?"
"He's losing coherence," Leo said. "His self-image isn't strong enough to hold a spirit guise together." He leaned forward to put a hand on David's arm, but the limb seemed to dissolve under his touch. "David, listen to me. You are whoever you think you are. What do you want to be?"
With a cry, David disintegrated into water.
Donatello lowered his head towards the little stream that ran towards him, and melted. The twin puddles sank into the sand and vanished.
"Oh crap," Raph said, in a voice that was barely a voice. "Crap. Leo, we're in deep shit."
"Wait." Leo stared intently at the sand, listening to the faint crackle of water moving through the grains. "Raph, get out of the way."
"What -"
"Get out of the way!"
Leo dove to the side, and hoped Raph was doing likewise, as a pillar of light erupted from the sand. A huge wave crashed over him, almost dragging him out to sea, and when he was able to look up, a single bright figure was standing where David and Donatello had been.
The glow faded, and Leonardo's heart sank as he saw David as he had been before, only with his nose maybe a little flatter and his T-shirt maybe a little more filled out.
"That's it?" Raph said, expressing the disappointment Leo was trying to hide.
"No." David was looking at his hands. "That's not it." He looked up. "Guys, Donatello is still out there. We need to find him again."