basically I'm getting this chapter up now because the show is about to crush my dreams of having Lucy Lawless as Jhanna and so I'm going to bury my head in the sand and pretend this weekend's episode isn't happening.

tmnt = viacom, as usual!

in this chapter: Leo and Donnie both stress a lot, Raph doesn't keep his mouth shut, and Mikey orders a pizza.

Stealers Keepers
part four

"Leo?"

Mikey rapped his knuckles on the bathroom door, and Leo had just enough presence of mind to retch silently to prevent the Mikey Hug of Healing from bursting through the door, full of yoga, clean breathing, and a rousing game of guess-the-chunks. "What is it, Mikey?" he asked, when his throat was empty enough to let him speak.

"Fugitoid wants you on deck. We got a message."

The from Donnie was unsaid, but Leo didn't need it — he could already tell, from the way he heard Mikey shifting from toe to toe outside of the bathroom, and the undertone of let's go, Le-oh! under his words. "Gimme a minute," he replied. "I'll see you there."

After rinsing his mouth out, Leo managed to haul himself onto the bridge, where everyone was crowded around the big holo-panel at the front of the bridge, lit up with Donnie's big I'm-not-at-all-in-trouble grin.

"What, did you toss your cookies?" Raph asked, and Leo glared, wiping the back of his wrist against his mouth; he could still taste the sour-bitter tang on his tongue, and when he sucked the inside of his cheeks, an acrid little lump of regurgitated cereal slunk up from behind his bottom lip. He forced it down and didn't mention — though he wanted to — how Raph 'tossed his cookies' every time he stepped foot in the airlock.

"I'm fine," he said instead. "Just imagined the wrong space-milk this morning."

It wasn't an answer, but it was enough for Raph, who turned away and jabbed a thick finger at the console in front of him, and ignored the way Leo rubbed the front of his plastron, just over his belly, as though it would soothe the gnawing sting below the shell. "You all ready?" Raph asked, then pressed play anyway. The console let out a cheerful blerp, and then Donnie started to move.

"Hey guys!"

Donnie's voice was cheerful — a little blown out, but the holo looked healthy; there were no bruises or scrapes, and he carried himself in his usual slouch, his shoulders tucked a little and his shell and back hunched. But his head was up tall.

He looked far too pleased with himself.

"So, I'm not in jail anymore. Which is— nice. Thing is, I kind of — we kind of — need your help."

"We!?" Raph snapped. "Who the heck is we?! These millions of space rebels he's palling around the galaxy with?!"

"Shhh!" said Leo, Mikey and April.

Donnie was quiet for another few seconds, still smiling patiently, then said, "Okay, so I'm assuming that Raph is finished yelling and making offensive and/or angry gestures towards my face—" Raph put his hands down. "—so, uh. I don't have much time before we need to send this thing and I don't wanna risk this getting into the wrong hands, so, at oh-four-hundred earth time, I'm gonna ping the ship. It'll be fast, but I know you guys can do this. When you get that ping, lock onto the signal, ping back, and we'll send you the co-ordinates. Find us. And, uh. Good luck! Ooh! And if you could bring a jar of peanut butter with you, that would be awesome. Okay bye!"

He waved, and the holo ended, freezing Donnie into a closed-eyed smile, his hand blurred in the light. For a moment, there was heavy, still silence. Leo swallowed down the thick, cold dread in the top of his gut, and reached over to replay the message. "Hey guys!" said Donnie again, and this time Leo watched everything — the way Donnie moved, the way he smiled, and the way he talked. He spoke quickly, he spoke clearly, and he said exactly nothing that was useful aside from one specific thing.

When the video was over, the silence settled again, but only for a second.

Raph slammed his foot into a seat, and while Fugitoid bleeped in alarm, whirled on them all. "Good luck?" he snapped. "GOOD LUCK? Gimme that, I'm gonna call that eggheaded little brat back and—"

"Raph," Leo said, sinking into himself, into the strange, comforting detachment that came when he needed to take over, when things were really bad, when it felt like he was watching a different Leo in action. "Donnie said peanut butter." Raph slumped, the fight not going out of him but having nowhere else to go, tensing in his arms and legs. On Leo's left, Mikey sat on a computer bank, swinging his legs; he nodded when Leo looked him in the eyes, and that was the three of them, all ready and in line.

"I don't get it," Casey said, at length.

April glanced at him. "It's a code," she said.

"Yeah, but— why peanut butter?"

Mikey started smacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth; the sound cut into Leo and dug under his shell, right between his shoulders. It sounded like a ticking clock. It sounded like a bomb. "Sticky situation," Mikey said. "But at least he didn't ask for crunchy peanut butter. That's, like, major no bueno."

"You guys are so weird," Casey said, and leaned back on his hands.

"What?" Mikey asked. "It's not like we can go 'hey guys, this is a trap. You should totally be careful of the stupid giant trap' if Shredder's on the other end of the line, so, peanut butter." He couched his hand confidingly on the side of his face. "That was my idea."

Leo sighed. "Anyway," he said. "Donnie's in peanut butter right now, which means, we need to haul him out, and then—"

Raph cut across him. "And how long's it gonna be until the next stunt he pulls?"

Leo swallowed down the coldness that suddenly rose in his chest; the conversation they never spoke about when it came to Donnie. About Donnie, and his constant need to help the helpless.

Which — Leo wanted to do it, too. But Leo usually wanted his team behind him.

Donnie?

Donnie just went ahead and did it anyway. And then stared any rebuke dead in the face, unflinching, unmoved, safe in the knowledge that he had been right, that he had done the right thing.

Raph went on. "April, fine, she's part of the team. But this— Xanthippe? Madonna? Whatever her name is—"

"Tal'Jhanna xan'Jhanna," Fugitoid piped up helpfully. Everyone ignored him.

"—and the stinkin' Pulverizer he's got chilling in a fish tank back at home? Don't try and tell me this isn't a pattern, Leo, because it is. And we're the ones who are gonna have to bail him out. Again."

"That's not fair!" April jumped in, and Raph executed a beautiful, textbook girl, talk to the handmovement that had Leo automatically raising his own hand to order April to stop before she pulled her blaster and shot Raph in the mouth.

"This isn't about bailing Donnie out, Raph," Leo replied, and then— "well, okay, it is, but c'mon, Donnie always has a good reason."

"Oh, yeah? Like, this?" Raph screwed up his face and clasped his hands in front of him. "You didn't see how she looked at me, sensei! You didn't look into her eyes," he mimicked. "Face it, Leo, Donnie always does this, and he's always going to do this, because more than anyone else in this family, more than you, it's not Donnie's heart that he's thinkin' with, it's his—"

"Raph."

For once, Raph shut his mouth before the real damage could be done. Instead, he made it worse: he tilted his head in April's direction, and gave Leo a significant Look.

And April was many things, but dumb was not one of them. "Thanks, Raph," she snapped. "Nice to know what you really think." Her voice was sharp, but the air in the room was like a too-thick gravy, and once April's voice faded, it mulched back together, grey and viscous and heavy on Leo's chest.

"Ignore him," Leo ordered, even though half of him wanted to hold Raph down and write MONA LISA on Raph's forehead with a big pink sharpie made out of hypocrisy and irony. "Raph, this isn't the time. You wanna yell at Donnie? You can do it when we get him back."

"Oh, believe me, I plan on it." Raph straightened, reaching over and hooking a finger around Casey's elbow. "C'mon, Casey. Let's hit the holodeck and practise for whatever Donnie's stupid loved-up brain got us all into, again."

"RAPH."

"Leo," Raph shot back. "You're the leader, Leo. You better put a stop to it before the next time he doesn't just drag us into another space war, he drags us to the morgue."

"Are you done?" Leo waited until Raph leaned back, his mouth still twisted like a pitbull that had chewed a bee. Then, before Raph could reply the smug way he always did (yeah I'm done with the subtext of I'm done Leo I said all my important words now go ahead and try to beat me and all my rightness), Leo found the words that he wanted to say: "We get it." He pulled out his Leader voice, and watched as Raph sullenly fell into line before things could get worse. The thunderclouds brewing on April's face were already enough of a danger! danger! sign without Casey leaning in waiting to watch a pissing contest, and without Raph continuing this shit-on-Donnie parade. And part of Leo couldn't help deeply, deeply resenting the fact that Donnie was so far past what Leo would consider good behaviour that he couldn't wait to see Splinter react to the whole sorry tale when they got home, and yet Leo was still having to stand up for him. "But Donnie wanted to help someone. And whatever she said to get him out of that cell, was enough that he wanted to help her. Let's leave it at that."

Raph kept chewing his bee.

Until Mikey piped up again, smacking through the tension with, "Dude, Pulverizer's face is grody. You really think he's Donnie's type? Donnie just tried to stop a nerd getting stomped on, that's all."

Raph threw up his hands, exasperated, and stomped out, and Leo could hear him muttering about how much he hated space, and everything space had ever done to them, and did he mention that he HATED SPACE? because he hated space. As his stomping echoed down the hall, Leo reached over and gently shoved Mikey's shoulder, silently thanking whatever gods there were that looked out for turtles that Mikey existed.

"Welp," Casey said, clapping his hands together. "Time for me to bounce before Captain Hissypants goes and punches his way through the holodeck walls. Catch you guys later."

He ticked off a salute and disappeared down the hallway. Leo cast a look at the remaining outsider.

"Heavens, just look at the time," Fugitoid said, his eyes blinking into clocks as he took the hint. "I seem to have left the oven on — do excuse me."

He activated his wheels and whirred out of the room, leaving the three of them alone. "Ignore Raph," Leo said again. "He's just… being Raph."

"I know," April said, too quickly, and folded her arms. Leo watched as, unconsciously, April flexed her fingers so they dug into the material of her space-suit.

"And you know Donnie," Leo prompted.

April didn't reply.

"That's not why we keep you around," Leo tried again, gently. "You're part of the team."

"I know."

Leo paused, gauging his next response. "Okay then," he eventually said, because any more would result in him trying to coax April out of her bad mood and he a) wasn't in the mood for coddling right now, and b) wasn't Donnie.

But maybe Donnie would just make things worse right now.

"C'mon," he said instead, tilting his head towards the door. "Let's go lock Raph and Casey in the holodeck together."

"I think they'd probably enjoy that," April sniped, with a tight little smile. "They found a luchadores program the other day and I'm not sure they're using it according to the story guidelines."

Once Leo managed to bury the mental image of Raph, Casey, a lot of sweat and some really homoerotic masks deep, deep down in his brain, down with the memory of his first Captain Ryan Meets A Dashing Turtle Alien OC Who Saves The Day fanfic and the rest of the family's shame-parades, he found himself watching the clock while April and the Fugitoid watched the scanners.

"There's the ping," April said, from Donnie's station. Leo craned his neck to see and sure enough, a tiny little blip blossomed out from somewhere in the galaxy. She hit a button, and Leo heard, rather than saw, Fugitoid's ship ping back; it sounded like a low sonar pulse, like out of old submarine movies, disappearing into the deep. "And now we wait," April said.

"Hopefully not too long." Leo set back on his heels, checking April again. She seemed to have calmed down now, wearing the distant, half-annoyed expression she usually did when she was focusing on something. Her bottom lip was chapped and chewed, and a thin line was wearing its way between her brows, but ever since he had known her, that had been there. Always something to be angry about, always something to worry about.

Sure enough, within a minute, something made a noise, and Fugitoid's eyes became loading screens. "Aaaand, received. Oh, that is interesting," he said, his eyes blinking back to normal.

"What's interesting?" April asked, before Leo could.

"The directions are specifically to the homeworld. I was assuming that we'd rendezvous with Donatello first, but apparently that's not the case."

"What's the difference?"

Fugitoid paused to gather his words, and Leo felt something heavy start tugging in his gut again. Fugitoid was so smart, the smartest thing Leo had ever seen; he didn't need to think about what he wanted to say unless he needed to be really, really careful. And then Fugitoid spoke, and Leo was right: "We're flying into a warzone, Leonardo. It might not be full of space-mines and cloaked grenades, but that planetary system is still disputed territory. We'll need to be careful."

Once, that would have made Leo so excited. Now it just filled him with dread, and the mental image of the ship being blown apart, four empty shells drifting through space until they, too, clonked into space mines and were reduced to dust.

"Oh. Great. How far off is it?"

How far is it until we can BEAT DONNIE?

"Approximately a day and a half's travel away." Fugitoid pressed his hands together. "I trust we're all ready to set off?"

Leo took in a breath through his nose, and nodded. Soon they'd have Donnie back, and the gnawing in his stomach from stress, from being three and not four, would go away, and Donnie would be grounded. "Okay. Wait, where's Mikey?" He leaned over, pressing a thumb against the ship's intercom. "Mikey! Need you on the bridge!"

"Dude, I'm right here." Behind Leo, the door swooshed shut behind Mikey, standing there with a big, flat cardboard box under his arm. Leo's tongue cramped long before the smell even hit: melted, sloppy cheese and cheap dough. "That's a pizza," Leo said slowly, rolling his tongue out of the spit ocean that had just formed in his mouth. "Where did you get a pizza?"

Mikey, mouth full, jerked a thumb towards the airlock, and as Leo looked out of the main viewfinder, a pizza delivery shuttle puttered away from the ship, back to the planet.

"Did— you ordered a pizza while we're trying to find our brother?!"

"Stress makes me hungry!" Mikey protested. "You want some? I promise, it has zero weird stuff. Aside from all the alien toppings that may or may not be weird stuff." He held Leo out a slice. "I'm pretty sure that these are totally normal space anchovies."

There was a whirring sound that Leo realised, a moment too late, was Fugitoid zooming in on the pizza. "Ah, dried tentacle slices! Yours is a stronger stomach than mine," he said, patting Leo on the shoulder and heading for his pod. "Everyone strapped in? Where are Raphael and—"

"Holodeck," April said, in a tone of voice that told everyone that they would not be coming out of the holodeck, even if they wanted to.

"Ah. Rightio. Well then. Shall we?"

There was a quiet murmur of agreement — plus Mikey enthusiastically ploughing through his tentacle pizza — then April tapped in the nav-points, Fugitoid started the engines, and they were gone.

The Veltien moons were eight satellites orbiting a giant gas planet. The second and third in the system were able to support (some form of) life, while the other six either spun too quickly, or too slowly, or kept being smashed into by comets, to be of any use. When Jhanna's Sapling entered orbit around the second moon, it narrowly avoided two other moons knocking it into deep space.

"Nobody will think to look here," she said, confidently manoeuvring the ship into position while Donnie clung to a thickly-vined wall and his breather. "My allies will meet us on the surface."

"Okay!" Donnie said. "Great! Awesome!"

"Is everything alright?"

"You drive like my brother," Donnie answered — as diplomatic as he could get. Jhanna smiled, clearly taking it as a compliment to be compared to one of the turtle warriors rather than Leo, The Nightmare Of Driver's Ed.

He's least likely to hit something just for fun, Donnie had said once, and that was true, but just because Leo was least likely didn't mean that he would never ever do it. If anything, it was just worse because Mikey and Raph would treat all of Manhattan like their own personal game of Grand Theft Auto, but Leo?

Leo couldn't be dared. Leo couldn't be tricked. Leo couldn't look at a grandma, pushing her groceries home, or a happy, singing group of Hare Krishna, spreading love and cheer and tambourine music through the neighbourhood in the early evenings, and come up with a points score.

But Leo?

Leo could be baited.

Hey Leo, hit that dumpster.

Raph, no. Sit back down.

What's the matter, Leo? Is that dumpster too scary?

Shut up, Raph.

Big tough fearless leader can't even give a little tap to a spooky scary dumpster? Oh no! There's just so much garbage in there! What if it has —gasp! Germs!

SHUT UP, RAPH. Did you seriously just say 'gasp' out loud? I mean, seriously?

Leo?

No, Mikey.

But Leo!

No!

LEO. THATDUMPSTERCANCELLEDSPACEHEROES—awwww YEAH SONNNNNN Raph you owe me twenty pizzas and dude why is Donnie breathing like that?

Leo also flat-out didn't care to learn how to parallel-park.

It's an assault-truck, Donnie, I think we're going to get more than just a ticket if the cops catch us.

Jhanna was a slightly more considerate driver than Leo. But that really wasn't saying much.

When they landed on the moon, a small contingent of other plant-people were waiting for them. Donnie squinted against the trisolar light as he followed Jhanna out of the ship, and counted. "Are these your generals?" he asked, laughing slightly as confidence buoyed him. "Ten armies? This might not be too difficult!"

"These are my allies," Jhanna said.

The buoy sank.

"I mean, they're representatives, right?" Donnie tried to swallow down the unsure quaver in his voice. "You have others coming, right?"

"I do not need anybody else." She moved away, towards her rebels, and they moved towards her, their queen, leaving Donnie hanging back, watching. Jhanna carried herself in what Donnie supposed counted as regal, her back straight, and her hands held out, palm-up and open. Each rebel approached, wiping a finger against the palm of Jhanna's hand, and her hand glistened in the light – blood, or something like it, catching the sun. When all ten had paid their respects, Jhanna closed her hands into fists, and then opened them again, her hands clean and new.

"Oh kay." Donnie counted again, and then again: still, ten. No matter how many times he counted it (maybe there was a body he hadn't seen — perhaps some of them were invisible — this was space, after all!), all Jhanna had was ten rebels to back her up.

Ten, plus Donnie, plus his brothers.

"Just." He crept closer, wringing his hands together, already trying to twist off his brothers' bloodfrom where it was now, currently, all over his hands. "It seems a little, heh, heh, I mean, the odds are a little—" TERRIBLE. "against you, right?"

"Odds," a rebel scoffed, holding a hand out towards the rest of the group. "We have no need of odds. We have righteousness."

Donnie couldn't help himself: he could stand for a lot of really weird stuff — plant princesses, getting roped into a planetary coup, that one time he and his brothers went skipping through Mikey's head — but dismissing mathematics, the fundamental building blocks of the universe, the constant, the everything? "Yeah, you can be righteously dead when you go running into battle ten against a thousand. Ooh, or go up against a full military armed with— what are those, wood phasers?"

The rebel held his wooden blaster closer to him. "It's a disruptor," he replied.

Donnie scoffed.

"We have need for nothing else! Not that an off-worlder like you could understand." The rebel stepped closer, squinting at Donnie's green skin as though it was a particularly off-putting growth compared to the lichen that covered his own face. "Do you even photosynthesise?"

"No," Donnie said shortly.

"Mammal," the bush-man responded, as though mammal to him meant what sewer apple meant to Donnie.

"Actually, I'm a reptile," Donnie said primly, and didn't say kinda.

"Enough." Jhanna's voice silenced them all, even Donnie. "The turtle is right. We are small, but with an accurate plan, we will succeed." Then she smiled. "Fortunately, Donatello, my ally, is something of a strategist. It is thanks to him that I was able to escape. And he has brothers."

The translator did not say brothers exactly; the metaphor was longer, more fluid, something about the same mother tree, the same soil in which Donatello and his brothers grew, watered by the poison of the Kraang but somehow managing to rise above the filth of their origins. Donnie opened his mouth to object — then quickly closed it when Jhanna kept talking: "—and if this terran can salvage himself, we, too, can rid our home of this current infestation."

Someone spat. It hissed as it hit the ground, a thin curl of steam gently unfolding into the air and then becoming nothing. Silence rolled through the group, and Donnie felt his shoulders tighten, already anticipating the speech that Jhanna was about to give:

"Moriah, may her roots rot, may her leaves see no sunlight, thinks that she has won." As Jhanna spoke, the vines on her head responded to her bloodlust, slowly starting to rise and weave around her head like hungry snakes. "She sits on my throne, in the forests of my ancestors. She is a degradation. And she will be destroyed."

The rebels surrounding her murmured in agreement. Someone yelled out "DEATH TO THE IMPOSTOR" and the other rebels echoed them, holding up their wood phasers. Jhanna watched her loyal rebels with something not unlike satisfaction; it was, Donnie realised later, the way Splinter looked at them sometimes when they came back from a fight against the Shredder, hale, and hearty, and victorious. Like good little soldiers.

She crossed the clearing, taking Donnie's chin in her rough-barked hand, and his heart leapt into his throat, both fear and something else. "Donatello. With your help, I will not only reclaim my throne, but I will have Moriah's head, and her body will burn upon a pyre made of her family, her ashes cast to the seas where she will never put down root."

"Oh," said Donnie, as Jhanna's men cheered and began chanting his name. "Great!" said Donnie.

I'M GOING TO DIE, thought Donnie.

tbc. comments are loved and appreciated! have a great day and thank you for reading!