A Ninja's Christmas Pt 2

Leo

"What's that smell?" Raph asked, setting down Spike to sniff the air.

"Whatever it is, it smells good," Leo answered as he stood up and headed for the kitchen. He entered to find Mikey happily frosting cookies with Ara.

"We finished!" Ara grinned with satisfaction, stacking the last cookie on a heaping pile. Leo's mouth watered. He reached for a cookie, only to have Mikey whisk the plate out of his reach.

He tsked a finger at him. "Oh no you don't! These are for Christmas."

"Oh, lighten up!" Raph entered the room and immediately began to try to help himself to a cookie. "You can always make more."

"No, we... can't. We're… out… of… flour!" Mikey grunted, whisking the plate to a different place every second.

Donnie poked his head into the room. "What smells like cookies?"

"I don't know, Donnie, maybe it's the cookies!" Raph replied in frustration. "The cookies we can't eat because Mikey is hogging them!" With that, he began chasing Mikey around the room in circles.

Donnie stuck his foot out. Mikey tripped over it, and the plate of cookies went flying into the air. Leo easily caught them before chiming approvingly, "That's what I call teamwork!"

"Hey!" Mikey leapt at the plate that was now high above Leo's head. "NO FAIR!"

Leo sighed and handed Mikey back the plate. "How about we have one each?"

"Fine," Ara butted in. "One can't hurt."

Mikey visibly brightened. "You're right," he agreed, looking hungrily at the plate, "but me first."

Mikey grabbed a cookie and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. His eyes shot wide open. The other turtles took this as encouragement, so they each snatched up a cookie and popped them into their mouths. The moment Leo chomped down on his first bite of cookie, he knew something was wrong. His mouth exploded in what felt like fire. The horrible flavors in his mouth were so strong, he could barely see straight. He rushed to the wastebasket with his brothers and Ara, spewing out the contents of his mouth as fast as possible. He stumbled to the sink and glugged down several pints of water before he sputtered, "What's in those things?"

Mikey shook his head in dismay. "Where did I go wrong?"

Ara choked on the water she was gulping down. "Where did YOU go wrong?! You mean you… when I was… after I asked you not t…"

Mikey shrank back. "Sorry," he whispered in an almost inaudible voice.

"Well, sorry doesn't feed the bulldog!"

"What… what bulldog?" Mikey asked, looking confusedly around the room.

"Never mind!" Ara groaned angrily. "The point is, all that hard work was for nothing! The cookies are uneatable because of you!" Ara stopped suddenly. "Oh, man. Mikey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…"

"No!" Mikey fumed angrily. "What do you know? You're the one who can't even do a backflip! It's one of the most basic moves!"

Ara sucked in a sharp breath, but Raph only snorted in amusement. "Man, Mikey! You gotta work on your insults! That was so random!"

Leo watched Ara fight back tears and silently disappear out of the door.

The rest of the brothers didn't notice, busy watching Donnie bag up the cookies. "These could come in handy…"

Leo slipped out the door after Ara just as the room erupted with laughter, Raph's "Yeah, let's see the Shredder eat one of those!" fading away as he followed her.

Ara was walking along "the river," a stream of clear water with strips of raised cement on either side. She did a series of complex ninjutsu moves, ending with a back flip. Her feet didn't make it to the ground in time on the last technique, and she crashed to the ground. Leo heard her curse under her breath before she pulled her legs to her chest and buried her head into her knees.

He quietly approached and sat noiselessly down beside her. "You okay?"

Ara jumped, and her head snapped up to take him in. She quickly turned and wiped away the tears staining her cheeks before facing him again. "You snuck up on me," she said with a small smile. "No one used to be able to do that besides my dad. I must be getting rusty."

Leo smiled in an attempt to lighten the mood. "Or maybe I'm just that good." Ara nodded silently in reply, turning to gaze into the water.

It was a few minutes before she spoke. "That move… the back flip? I used to be able to do it perfectly. It was one of my favorites, and now I fall every time I try it. I don't know what's wrong with me."

Leo cleared his throat awkwardly and climbed to his feet. "I was watching you just now, and if you don't mind, I might have a couple suggestions." He smiled invitingly and extended a hand for Ara to take.

Ara looked up at him for a couple moments as if weighing his offer before she reached up and allowed Leo to hoist her to her feet. Leo stepped down from the raised cement and onto the level ground. Ara followed his lead and crossed her arms over her chest somewhat sceptically. "I'm all ears."

"Okay." Leo blew the air out of his cheeks, suddenly self-conscious with Ara's steady gaze pressing down on him. "When you did backflips before, I'm assuming that you arched your back to push yourself through that circular motion in the air. Now you've got your carapace," Leo reached forward and softly tapped the back of Ara's shell for emphasis, "stopping you from arching your back like you used to, and it's making your flips fall short. Make sense?"

"I'm following," Ara murmured thoughtfully.

"Okay, good. When you jump, you need to push off from the ground as hard as you possibly can and stretch your arms straight over your head, more than you're used to. You'll be completely straight, but you'll get all the momentum you need for the tuck and flip. Like so." Leo executed a backflip with practiced precision and landed evenly on both feet.

Ara nodded slowly, then backed up to give herself room. "Let me give this a shot." With that, she attempted a similar backflip. She fell just short, lost her footing, and slipped to the ground. "Wait, wait," Ara put up a hand to stop Leo as he started to rush forward to help her up, "I've got this." She pulled herself back to her feet and gave it a second try, this time landing squarely on her feet with perfect balance.

She let out a giddy laugh, and the sound made Leo's heart leap happily in his chest. He grinned. "I knew you cou-"

Ara cut him off as she leapt forward and tackled him with a gleeful hug. Leo laughed in surprise, a warm blush rushing to his cheeks. "Thank you so much, Leo." Ara backed away, looking a little pinker than usual herself. "One little backflip might not seem like a big deal, but it means a lot that you helped me through it. Now I can cross one more thing off the list of things I've lost after being mutated." Ara sat back down by the stream of water, and after a moment's hesitation, Leo joined her.

As he settled down beside her, Ara tugged a golden locket out of the bandages that surrounded her wrists. She snapped it open and passed it to Leo. "That's me with my dad, Asato Nao." Leo studied the picture she had gestured to carefully. There was a girl with long, dark brown hair and smiling, deep brown eyes that he guessed was Ara. She was with a middle-aged man who had black hair sprinkled with gray streaks. The man had Ara's dark brown eyes, or at least vice versa. Gentle laugh lines shaped his face, and Leo could easily tell how much he loved his daughter.

Leo looked at the girl in the picture, then up at Ara, then back again. Her eyes hadn't changed in the least. Yes, he could definitely tell it was her. "And that's my mom. She died when I was a baby." Leo focused his attention on the picture in the other side of the locket. The woman in the photo had glossy, light brown hair several shades lighter than her daughter's. Instead of chocolate brown eyes, hers were an intense green. She was smiling brightly into the camera, a mischievous look on her face.

Leo studied the pictures for a minute longer, then passed the locket back to Ara. "Thank you."

Ara looked surprised. "For what?"

"For showing that to me." Somehow, this meant a lot to Leo. Ara confiding in him made him feel really good.

"You're welcome," Ara replied. They were silent, savoring the moment and gazing into the clear water.

All of a sudden, a strong green arm was wrapped around his shoulder. "Ahhh, This is so sweet! You two just sitting here, talking!" Mikey. Leo twisted around to glare at him and at Raph and Donnie not far behind, arms crossed over chests and eyebrows raised. Rolling his eyes, Leo turned to Ara, only to discover that she had disappeared. How did she… Leo answered his own question: it's a ninja thing.