Is this the series I should be focusing on right now? No, of course not. "26 Letters" still isn't finished after 5 years or whatever. But I'm still in that first week of "welcome back to school we don't really have stuff for you to do yet" so this happened! Oh yeah, I'm in grad school now. That's a thing I do.

Honestly these are just a bit more fun to write. I have another that I hope will be up soon-ish.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Ninja Turtles. I do own a couch. That's about it though.

"Have you ever sworn?"

"Like, on my life? I mean I've sworn on my honor a couple times. With pretty alarming frequency, actually. I shouldn't have to do it nearly as often as I do."

"No, I mean bad words. Like 'damn' or something."

"Oh, no. No. No. Honorable ninja don't swear."

"They don't swear out load or they don't swear at all?"

"They don't swear at all."

"That is absolutely not true."

"Excuse me? How would you know?"

"I have heard Raphael swear."

"Raph is Raph and he doesn't count. And he only swears when he's brawling, which is a totally different approach to physical combat then ninjutsu."

"I do know Mikey doesn't swear."

"Well that's because Mikey's the youngest and he doesn't know such foul language yet."

"He's technically the same age you are."

"Mikey is both mentally and spiritually younger than the rest of us. Especially me."

"I firmly believe Mikey's adversion to swearing stems less from him not knowing the words and more from him preferring to use more unique phrases."

"What do you mean?"

"Yesterday Mikey stubbed his toe on a credenza I had just gotten for my shop. I fully expected him to say, 'fuck,' or something-"

"April!"

"I'm a grown woman! Anyway, instead he just hopped around saying, 'ffffffraggle snaggle rock!' It was kind of weird."

"Weird for Mikey or weird for the situation?"

"Just a weird thing to say when you stub your toe. Who does that? Who involves children's television in such matters? But whatever. I've heard Don swear."

"You have not! Donatello absolutely does not swear. I mean why would he? His vocabulary is basically limitless. He doesn't have to stoop to pedestrian expressions."

"I'm telling you, he swears when I'm with him at night."

"Excuse me? April, are you trying to tell me something?"

"What? Oh my god! No! What is wrong with you! You guys are like my little brothers! I meant, he's prone to swearing when we're trying to hack into systems or whatever and it's really late and- oh will you stop laughing!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was just teasing you."

"You may not swear, sword boy, but you do have a dirty mind."

"I mean I kind of literally grew up in a gutter, so…"

I firmly believe that the boys swear in battle and you absolutely cannot convince me otherwise. I don't know why, exactly, I was thinking about that aspect of mutant turtlehood earlier, but this is my way poking fun at it. And I wanted to explore Leo and April's relationship just a bit. I believe it was FantasiaWandering that referred to them as "team big sibling" in her work "Falling." I thought that concept was so cute.

Did'ja like it? Lemme know!