I am sooooo sorry this chapter took so long! It's because my writing time is small and divided in half for time I have to write this story and the time I have to write "Growing Up", another TMNT story I'm working on. Plus, this chapter was so unbelievably hard and I think I rewrote it like 5 times before I was somewhat satisfied with it. So, sorry if you hate the chapter, it's not my favorite either.

And if you have an idea for a prank Splinter, Donatello, Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo, April, or even Spike can do, feel free to let me know. Just keep it appropriate, because I've gotten some very creepy and weird suggestions.

Raphael sat at the kitchen table, resting his folded arms on the surface and and staring at Spike, his pet turtle. Raphael had not spoken for several minutes, but jumped at every small noise, thinking a prank was being set upon him, even though no one was near him. Donatello was in a corner of the Lair, plotting something out-most likely a practical joke-on a piece of paper; Michelangelo was with Leonardo while they practiced simple ninjitsu moves while watching a cartoon on television, Splinter was still "cleaning" the dojo, and April had disappeared from the Lair about an hour ago (she had not been around for Leonardo's last failure of a prank, having disappeared minutes after Donatello's latest one) and no one had yet noticed her abscence.

The cartoon Leonardo and Michelangelo had been watching ended and Leonardo said he was going to go skating in the sewers and jogged off to find his skateboard. Michelangelo traipsed up to Raphael and took a seat at the table.

"Hi, Raph," said Michelangelo innocently.

"Hi," grunted Raphael, his eyes half closed as if he would fall asleep from boredom any second.

"You bored?"
"Yeah," Raphael replied absentmindedly.

The conversation had started off nicely, but barely a minute later Donatello was yelling at Raphael to stop throwing things at his orange-masked brother. Donatello himself was having to defend himself from spare utensils and such that had found their way to him when Michelangelo had flung them off with his nunchucks. Spike was pulled into his shell in fear as flying kitchen utensils soared inches above him.

"NO!" Donatello shouted. "Raph, don't throw the toaster!"

"The toaster?"

Michelangelo, Donatello looked up to see who had talked, and even Raphael paused his rampage, still holding the toaster above his head, ready to toss it.

Leonardo was standing in the entrance to the kitchen, holding his skateboard and looking puzzedly from Michelangelo to Donatello to Raphael. He soon realized what was going on and said,"Feel free to throw the toaster, Raph. It's a piece of junk. It always breaks when I use it."

Leonardo shrugged and walked out of the room, his three brothers didn't move until he had gone and watched him walk away. Then when they heard his skateboard wheeling down the sewer tunnels, Raphael lifted the toaster high above his head and prepared to throw it. Michelangelo readied himself to run away and Donatello began to back off from the fight; things were getting ugly.

"What started this tantrum, Raph?" Donatello asked, now at a safe distance from the fray, but still holding his bo staff in front of himself protectively.

"Dude, as if little Raphie needs a reason to be mad!" shouted Michelangelo when Raphael didn't reply. "I only called him a bloated buffalo, like, three times. He's too touchy!"

"Don't call me 'little Raphie'! ...Or a bloated buffalo!'" Raphael roared. He finally tossed the toaster. Michelangelo ducked and the appliance flew over his head. Donatello, who wasn't about to let a good toaster go to waste (no matter how much Leonardo complained about it), jumped forward and caught it in his hands before hitting the floor.

"That's it, Mikey!" said Raphael. He charged for his orange-banded brother, but Michelangelo dashed away and into the sewer tunnels, Raphael following after him.

Donatello let out a breath of air he hadn't realized he been holding and set the toaster back on the kitchen table. He looked down at Spike and said,"Honestly, sometimes Raph is beyond all reason. Especially lately. It must be all the stress from the Prank War."

Donatello walked over to the refridgerator and pulled out a cold slice of pizza, sitting at the kitchen table and munching on it casually. He began to think; not about Shredder or any other enemies (they had been silent lately), or about how long it would take to fix yet another broken T-phone (the one Leonardo had dropped earlier), but about the Prank War, the only thing the Hamato family and April could focus on this week.

As he began mulling over his many prank ideas in his head, trashing the worst ideas and building on the best, he looked at the Prank War scoresheet April had hung on the fridge. Being so deep in thought, he didn't take much of it in, except that he was tied in first place with Michelangelo with four points each.

After he finished his pizza, he began pacing, thinking hard about pranks. He really wanted to impress April with his practical jokes, so he had been spending a lot of his time the last couple days on coming up with the very best pranks he could.

He glanced up at the scoresheet one more time, but this time something caught his attention. Spike had a section on the sheet! Donatello looked round at the little turtle sitting on the kitchen table so fast he cricked his neck. He knew Spike had been put into the Prank War as a joke by April but she never said he wasn't officially part of it.

Should I prank him? thought the purple-masked turtle thought instantly as he watched Spike chew innocently on his lettuce leaf. He liked the idea for nearly a second before the big drawback to it hit him: that would make him look completely pathetic. Donatello knew he was better than to have to stoop that low to get points. Maybe that was exactly the reason why no one else had pranked Spike yet either.

But he could help me pull off a prank or two, Donatello thought. That idea made his eyes light up with excitement. The perfect practical joke had finally hit him!

Donatello darted into the room he shared with his brothers. He pulled his collection of comic books out from under his bed and began searching through them. He found a comic he had that he knew Raphael had copies of as well, then a couple others in his pile that he knew Michelangelo and Leonardo had too.

Once Donatello had finished sorting through his comic book collection, he placed most of it back under his bed and turned to the few he had picked out. The one he knew Raphael also had a copy of was a of a strange anti-hero comic (Donatello had gotten the copies he owned from Raphael for Christmas two years ago since Raphael thought it was the best comic book anyone could get). He had never even begun to read it. The one comic Donatello knew Leonardo had as well was an old Space Heroes issue number one reprint that his blue-banded brother practically worshipped. And the one Donatello had that Michelangelo owned too was a random issue of Superman from 1993 that Michelangelo had read several hundred times and quoted every once and a while.

Donatello looked at the comics for a minute. He had no interest in any of them, so he concluded that he could sacrifice them for the good of his prank. He knew that none of his brothers had any idea he still owned these comic book issues because they never saw him reading them or even heard him talk about them.

The purple-masked turtle darted back into the kitchen. He saw that Raphael and Michelangelo were not back and that Leonardo was still apparently out skateboarding. April was still gone and Splinter could be heard working loudly in the dojo. Still, Donatello was quiet and cautious as he walked over to the kitchen table and picked up Spike.

Once back in his room, Donatello sat Spike down on the floor and flopped down on his bed. He began to tear the comic books he had picked out of his collection into little pieces until all that was left of them were little piles of paper.

Satisfied with his work, Donatello moved onto the next step of his plan. He dug out Raphael's, Michelangelo's, and Leonardo's hordes of comics. He took the 1993 Superman issue from Michelangelo's, the dark anti-hero comic from Raphael's, and the Space Heroes reprint from Leonardo's and hid them under his mattress.

Then Donatello sat on the floor and began to place the little pieces of the comics he'd torn up onto Spike's face and on the floor around him. Once done, he backed up and admired his work. "Okay, Spike, this is as much your prank as it is mine. Whether my brothers believe it or not all depends on you."

Spike merely blinked dully and looked up at Donatello.

"Oh, look at me, I'm becoming Raphael, talking to you like you can understand," Donatello sighed. Before he could say anything else, he heard shouts from the Lair.

They're back.

Donatello rushed out of the room and into the Lair. He figured he wouldn't lead his brothers into their room to see Spike because they would instantly know it was a prank. It would be better to let them find Spike themselves, no matter how long it would take.

So, how did you like Part 1 of the chapter known as "An Unpredictable Team-Up"? Loved it, hated it, or not sure because it was so confusing? Let me know so I can improve. I wrote it to show how a prank being successful or not all depends on how the person doing it handles it. Donatello obviously took a different route with this prank than Leonardo did. Will it mean success?