so this has been rattling around in my head for a while but now is finally a thing. watch and marvel as the show dances all over my dreams in like, four episodes time.

i present to you:

how donnie met jhanna and leo got a stomach ulcer:
part one.

Leo should have realised that stopping at the Galaxy Mall was a bad idea.

In hindsight, it was a really, really bad idea.

Just.

In the grand scheme of things, even Leo couldn't have predicted that just going shopping would have ended up here. Honeycutt had sat them down and firmly educated them on how not to make an entire planet angry this time; he'd even given them a small allowance, in case anything else got broken, so they could quickly pay for it, apologise, and, more importantly, leave.

But this.

This was just.

In the arena, one of the alien women currently throwing down let out a loud, ululating shriek, before dragging her ritual dagger across the throat of her opponent. Black blood spurted across the sand, and, clutching a handful of red moss, Jhanna began to saw off Moriah's head.

The entire crowd dropped to their knees, bowing: "ALL HAIL THE QUEEN!"

To Leo's left, he could hear Donnie joining in — "ALL HAIL THE QUEEN" — and he forced himself to not kick Donnie so hard he popped out of his shell.

This was all Donnie's fault.

"Biggest shopping centre in this quadrant!" Honeycutt had said, his eyes blinking into shopping bags for one brief moment. "I'm sure they'll have something for you boys to look at." Then he'd turned to Casey, looked at the stained pants that Casey had been wearing since before the escape, and added flatly, "I insist that we stop here. No, really. I insist."

Once the ship had docked, Honeycutt had led them through the parking lot (spaceships, there were so many spaceships) and through a crowd, past glowing, bright shopping booths and carts and all of it — Mikey's excited yelling, and Raph trying to sound totally unimpressed even when he saw the giant alien with faces for feet — was with the backing soundtrack of a soft, delighted, continuous whimpering as Donnie saw the hovercarts, the holoprojectors, all of the weird and wonderful alien technology that Leo had only ever seen in sci-fi movies.

And it was here. And it was real.

Leo had to clamp down on the urge to pull Donnie's left hand — currently being chewed in excitement — out of his mouth.

"Right," said Honeycutt, stopping near a large glowing info-point. "We'll meet back here in two hours — that's two Earth hours, people, you all know what those are, so best behaviour. Any questi—"

Donnie's right hand shot up. "IS THERE A COMPUTER STORE HERE"

Honeycutt poked at the holoscreen, and nodded. "On the third floor, in the blue segme—"

Donnie gasped. It was quite possibly the most joy-filled, longing-filled gasp that Donnie had ever made.

"—nt."

"QUANTUM COMPUTERRRRRRRRRRS" screamed the trail that Donnie left behind.

"Welp," Casey said. "I'm gonna go find what passes for a soda in this place. Red, you comin' with?"

"Ah, no," Honeycutt said, latching a finger in Casey's collar. "You, young man, are coming with me. Come along, off we go, there's a good fellow."

As Casey was hauled off in the direction of menswear, Leo looked to his brothers, and April, and shrugged. "Two hours?" he said, and everyone peeled off — Raph and Mikey together, April on her own, and then there was Leo.

He had the small credit chip Honeycutt had given each of them tucked into the wrappings of his left hand, and they'd all been thoroughly lectured after the last time they all went shopping — what could possibly go wrong this time?

Leo eventually caught up with Mikey and Raph in what seemed to be the comic book store. Mikey was fawning over a holocube that was showing some sort of space anime, and while Leo wanted to look at that, he also wanted to look at everything else. The credit chip felt like it was burning into his wrist through his wrappings — he wanted to buy comic books, he wanted to buy space movies, he wanted to know what the galaxy's equivalents to Space Heroes were and how much he would be allowed to judge them all and find them lacking.

It was when Leo was looking at a copy of Fleet and Flotilla, and trying to look like he wasn't at all interested in the concept of forbidden tragic romances, that the crackle of a radio caught his attention.

— suspect is green, bipedal, two arms and is also armed — back-up requested.

Leo caught Raph's eye; his expression was grim, and serious. When both of them turned, Mikey was already there and ready.

They moved as one, swift and precise. Mikey branched off first, curving off to the left as Raph took the right, and Leo took point. He couldn't shake the feeling of being vulnerable without Donnie at his back.

When they found him, Leo felt relief rise out of his bones in the brief second before he'd assessed the situation: Donnie, flanked by three security guards, standing outside of the computer store. Near them, a nerdy-looking alien — with wiry hair and a third eye in his sternum — was glaring. A small crowd had started to gather, people rubber-necking (some literally rubber-necking) as they passed.

Raph groaned. "Ugh, you gotta be kidding me. Donnie, you got into a nerd fight?"

"Oh, hey, fellas," Donnie said vaguely, with a nervous laugh that all three of them knew was Donnie's oh-boy-I-hecked-up laugh. "Everything's fine — just. Just a minor misunderstanding."

The bigger security guard — easily three times the size of Rocksteady — snorted, and picked up Donnie with one broad, eight-thumbed hand around Donnie's shell. Then, before Leo could order his brothers into action, the guard turned Donnie upside down and shook him.

"Dude," Mikey whispered to Leo over Donnie's loud, screaming protests. "Is Dee… rattling?"

"Son, I'm going to have to ask you to come with me," a smaller security guard said, as a handful of very small, very expensive looking pieces of tech came tumbling out of Donnie's shell, and landed on the ground, one by one.

The security office was small, and airy — looked more like an information desk than somewhere that was currently holding his brother prisoner. Honeycutt had turned up about fifteen minutes after they hauled Donnie through a forcefield and out of sight, and dumped a suspiciously-clean-smelling Casey on the sofas. Ten minutes after that, April had turned up, looking blown-out and frantic, and it was about thirty seconds ago that the Fugitoid had finally gotten to the front of the queue and was trying to explain why, exactly, Donnie needed to be bailed out immediately.

("Zayton. Z-a-y-t— without the diacritics, yes — o- well, I suppose I would be their legal guardian, yes— Earth. I know! Lovely place. Better to visit while you still can.")

Raph took a seat on one of the benches provided, his shell squeaking on the covers every time he shifted. Leo situated himself against the wall, able to see whoever was coming or going.

Mikey, April and Casey sat on another bench, April's fingernails digging tightly into her arm until Casey reached over and pulled her hand into his. She snatched it away, getting to her feet and pacing instead, and they all watched as a big, lumbering alien, all extremities bound in light, was tucked into an oversized vacuum tube, and boosted to somewhere they couldn't see. "Is Donnie gonna go in that?" Mikey asked, his voice cracking.

"No," Leo said firmly.

And then they waited.

April kept pacing. Then Raph started, his big fists curled tight and Leo could see, in the tension in Raph's arms and shoulders, that he was just as tightly-wound as Leo felt: that if he could, he'd tear through the walls, and drag Donnie by the tails of his bandana all the way back home, to the lair if they could, and never let him out of their sight.

(Once, Mikey had asked one too many times why they couldn't talk to humans, why they needed to stay away from the mole people down at City Hall — who weren't real moles, from the sewer workers, from the cops who came looking for runaway kids, and sensei told them about tables and knives and police and the government, and then Mikey had never asked again.)

"LIGHT CUFFS," Donnie said, when he finally got his phone call. He held his bound wrists up, beaming, and Leo couldn't scream and stab them off as a reply, so he settled for screaming internally instead. "Leo! Do you see these? And oh, the locking systems, it's light-years away from anything the Kraang are doing! You know, I figure if I can get even a fraction of the tech that they're using for this small holding facility then it would really help us when we get home—"

"YOU'RE IN JAIL, DONNIE," Leo finally yelled, throwing his hand out. It cut through Donnie's hologram, leaving a slick, oil-like effect in its wake until Donnie's plastron reformed in the light.

"Well that's just rude," Donnie sniffed, glancing down, and then back up at Leo. "And it's not jail, it's a temporary holding facility until I speak to the Advocate."

"You are in," Leo said, biting the words out one by one as though that would make his stubborn, stupid brother realise just how much trouble he was in — if not with the Advocate, then with Leo himself. And with sensei, when they all got home. "jail. What if they press charges?! In case you forgot, we have a world to save. And a countdown on it!"

"Okay, first of all, you really need to stop watching Law and Order. Second of all, I'm a minor species from an underdeveloped planet that hasn't even gotten FTL travel yet. It'll be fine. I'll be out of here before you know it."

"You stole computers!"

"I didn't steal."

"Don—"

"Leo, I'm a ninja. I've got a plan." Donnie huffed, his hologram folding its arms.

"I'll tell you what your plan is. Your plan is to sit there, and shut up for the next hour or whatever until the Fugitoid bails you out. And then you're going to go back to the ship, and then we're going to leave." He wanted to say more, about how when they got back Donnie was getting a bell tied to his shell, and he was getting grounded, and Leo was never letting him out of his sight again, because Leo had seen far too many movies where stealing meant surprise! we're cutting your hands off, and Donnie needed his hands, and Leo needed his brother, healthy and whole and unharmed.

Donnie turned his head, listening to something being said off-camera. Leo couldn't hear it, and the not-knowing of what was going on with Donnie gnawed in his gut. He was supposed to know these things, he was supposed to look after his brothers. Now Donnie was in Space Jail, and Leo wasn't in there to get him out.

"I've gotta go," Donnie said, but Leo had already figured that his time was up. "It'll be fine! Honestly, I think this is going to be a really good thing for me!"

"Oh my god."

"Say hi to the others for me!"

As Leo shuffled back from the holopod, Raph jerked to his feet, followed by April. "So? Is he gettin' out?"

"Is he gonna be okay?" Mikey asked, and over his shoulder, April looked at Leo too for the answer.

"I'm sure he's fine," Leo said. "Where's the Fugitoid?"

"Still talking," April replied. She scratched at her elbow, looking nervous.

"You okay?"

April smiled tightly. "Let's just say I'm not used to cops actually listening."

Leo shifted, and Mikey reached over, slinging an arm around her shoulders. During those first few weeks topside, when April had fallen into their lives, half of her time outside of school, when she wasn't at the lair, she'd been talking to the police about her dad's disappearance, until they'd finally given up. Leo had never let himself think about where they might be now, if the police had just listened to April once, and dug the Kraang out before they'd managed to wreck New York the first time.

A soft whirring to Leo's left sounded, and Fugitoid cleared his throat. "I'm afraid the Advocate has already gone home for the evening," Honeycutt said. "So I have an appointment for tomorrow morning, first thing."

Leo's chest clenched.

"What, so we're just gonna leave Donnie locked up?" Casey asked, cutting a hand through the air. "No way!"

"We really don't have much of a choice, now come along. Look on the bright side! The prisons on this planet are really very comfortable — at least, that's what I've seen on the extranet. Toilets with seats! Can you imagine?"

Leo glanced to Raph, who nodded once, firmly. They didn't even need to look for Mikey this time.

Let's go.

And as Leo sank into the shadows with his brothers at his side, he heard Fugitoid: "Oh, for the love of—"

The cells of the holding facility were neat, and tidy, with shiny walls and glowing forcefields at the door each cell; depending on the level of the offender, the light of the forcefield could be green, or blue, all the way up to stark white for the most dangerous. Most of the cells were empty; the station had been generous with all of its facilities, on the off-chance of a particularly rowdy crowd or three meeting at the wrong place at the wrong time.

There were two prisoners that evening — a terran (green: minor shoplifting), and a species from Alpha-Tauri (blue: turned over a noodle cart because they were cheap with the spices) who had melted back into a gelatinous state, just to get rid of zir ears because of the noise from zir neighbour —

"ONCE AGAIN, FROM THE TOP — ONE HUNDRED DECIMALS OF PI ON THE BOARD, ONE HUNDRED DECIMALS OF PIIIIIIII, YOU TAKE ONE DOWN, YOU DO MATH AROUND, YOU DON'T HAVE AN ACCURATE CIRCLE NOMOOOOOOOORE"

— and when the security guard on duty finally got goddamn sick of the singing, he decided to make his rounds early, and maybe hit the sleep-gas button on the cells.

Except, when he got there, the speaker had been pulled out of the wall of the cell, its wires reconfigured. From a small, jury-rigged audio-clip, playing on, and on, and on, a voice screamed/sang: "NINETY EIGHT DECIMALS OF PI ON THE BOARD, NINETY EIGHT DECIMALS OF PIIIIIIIIIII"

There was no terran to be found.

next part soon! happy nano, guys!