Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Raph, are you sure there are no monsters here?” Mikey asked in concern.

“Why would there be, but it shouldn’t matter since today I am the leader,” Raph said back, while continuing to walk forwards.

“Logically speaking the chances of us seeing monsters in the sewers is low, when we don’t make loud noises,” Donnie glanced at Mikey to make a point.

“This isn’t a good idea guys. We can't go too far or master Splinter is going to be worried,” Leo glanced back to make sure he knew the route back home.

The four brothers continued to keep walking in the abandoned parts of the sewers; they soon found themselves near a sewage river that was heading to a very steep waterfall. There was a lot of garbage flowing through the river that disappeared after it fell off, simultaneously creating loud sounds that echoed through the sewers.

They looked around for a bit for something interesting, when they found nothing that caught their interest they decided to start leaving. Raph leading through the tunnels.

“Well that was pointless” Raph huffed disappointedly.

“We can’t always find something good, but at least we now know the place,” Donnie said, while still continuing to look for anything useful.

“Donnie’s right, now that we know this place, we can use it as a safe point,” Leo said from the back of the group.

They kept walking to another part of the abandoned sewers, to make sure nothing was left untouched. Sadly there wasn’t anything interesting again. Until they went back to the first place they scavenged, that had gathered a lot more garbage while they were gone.

“I’m tired guys, can’t we come here again another time?” Mikey asked with a yawn.

“Sure.” Raph answered quickly to make it seem like he wasn’t either tired. Which Leo noticed, but didn’t comment on it opting to stay little behind the others to make sure nothing was following them. They started to leave the sewage river to go back home.

“Chirp”

Leo halted and swiftly turned around to see what made the noise, this caused his brother to stop and look at Leo.

“What is it Leo?” Raph asked, getting ready to fight.

“Shh, I heard something,” Leo whispered. In total silence, they all heard it.

“Chirp. . Chirp!”

All four of them froze, not used to hearing something else chirping. Sure the brothers would chirp, but it was getting rarer since they are now at least five years olds. But hearing chirping from somebody else was unnerving to them. It sounded a lot more desperate, almost pleading.

“Chirp! Chirp!”

The chirping became louder and a lot more clearer. They could trace the sound to a box that was stuck on a branch. The box was small and was breaking apart. The sound coming from it was becoming quiet, but still something you could hear. Leo, being the closest to the box, took it out of the river and gently placed it on the ground. Everybody gathered around the box, debating on what to do, while the chirping was still ongoing.

“Do we open it?” Mikey asked.

“Obviously, hey Leo, here, save it,” Raph answered with a snarl.

“Chirp?. . ”

There was a beat of silence and anticipation as Leo reached for the cover and took it off. They looked inside the box and found a baby mutant turtle or a hatchling, who had been crying. The moment the hatchling saw the other it started to reach for them, while the brothers were shocked. The hatchling managed to touch Mikey's hand, snapping him out of his crisis.

“Aww it's a baby turtle,” Mikey giggled at the baby and carefully took it off the box. Which snapped the other from their shocks.

“Another mutant, but how?” Donnie asked, as he kept looking at the hatchling who fit perfectly on Mikey’s hands, “also what do we do with it?”

“We can’t leave it here, so we have to take it home,” Leo said as he poke the tots feet, which twitched away from the touch.

“It has bruises, we need to leave now. Mikey give me the baby,” Raph said with a worried look on his face. Mikey looked away from the baby to protest, until he felt it drool on him.

“Okie dokie, here is the baby,” Mikey gave the hatchling to Raph, who took it gently. The hatchling looked at the brother with its dark gray eyes, as though it was studying them. Until it moved and chirped again, this time sounding more tired and leaning on Raph for support.

“Let’s go guys, Master Splinter is already waiting for us to get back,” Leo said as he was taking the lead. The other followed him while they traveled through the sewers. Sometimes checking on the baby to make sure it was fine.

“Chirp?” The hatchling looked up at Raph, who looked down meeting the baby’s eyes.

“Chirp,” He said back, making the baby stretch its head, so that it was buried under Raph’s chin, causing Ralph to tense. But it was gone as soon as it came, because the hatchling was now playing with his hands. Raph couldn’t decide what to do, so he allowed the baby to keep playing. Meanwhile his brothers were keeping an eye on the situation. All of them saw how Raph started to smile fondly at the hatchling.

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Splinter knows his sons and he has come to expect a lot of things from them. But this is something that even he couldn’t have predicted. So when his sons came back from their small journey with another mutant, to say he was confused would be an understatement.

Leonardo was the one to tell Splinter how they found the baby. Raphael was holding the baby gently and being mindful of its bruises. While Michelangelo and Donatello were close to him, looking at the hatchling with curiosity now that they weren’t in the dark and had some light. The hatchling has dark forest green skin and their eyes are dark gray.

When Leonardo finished their account of the story, Splinter decided to ask Raphael for the hatchling, which he did reluctantly. Splinter noted that especially
Rapheal had formed a strong connection with the hatchling.

“It seems to be injured, Donatello, can you give me the bandages?” Splinter asked as he kept looking at the baby for more injuries, he mostly found bruises, but nothing that could endanger the hatchling. Donatello came quickly back with a med kit that he set next to Splinter, then he joined his brothers who were watching Master Splinter from the sidelines.

Splinter started bandaging the hatchling. It didn't take long because the baby was sleeping. When he was done, he carefully put the baby on top of a pillow to continue sleeping. After which Splinter turned to his sons, who were still observing the hatchling. Splinter smiled knowingly at his sons.

“I see that you have found a new member to our family,” Splinter said.

This made the brothers stare at their father with a confused look. before his words sank in.

“We are keeping him!” Mikey grinned before realizing, “oh my shell, I am getting a younger brother. I won’t be the youngest anymore!”

“How do you know that the hatchling is a boy?” Leo asked, turning to look at Mikey.

“I dunno, it just feels like it?” Mikey answered.

“I agree with Mikey, the hatchling has a long tail and his shell is round like us,” Raph commented. Which made Donnie and Mikey look at Raph, while Leo got up to get something.

“You listen to me when I talk to you about that,” Donnie grinned, as Mikey leaned his head on Donnie’s shoulder.

“Never thought you would be the type to listen to something like that,” Mikey eyed Raph with a growing grin, “are you sure we have the right Raph?”

“Oh, I'll show you what I learned,” Raph got up and threw himself at Mikey.

Despite Mikey and Raph fighting, they weren’t too loud for their standard. Donnie wasn’t that interested watching Mikey get his shell handed to him, so he changed his focus on the hatchling. To his surprise, he saw Leo putting a blanket on top of the baby. They made eye contact for a moment, after which Donnie joined Leo. Both of them now watched as Mikey and Raph wrestled.

“We should probably stop them,” Leo said as he was getting up.

“I know, but I want to see how long they will last this time,” Donnie kept watching the fight.

Splinter looked back at his sons and then at the new addition to the family, and petted the youngling, who was still sleeping despite the noise, which relieved Splinter of his worry for the baby not fitting in. The hatchling started to move closer to Splinter’s hand and leaned his full weight on it. At that moment Splinter decided that he will protect this youngling with his life. When he turned around to look at his sons, he was to stay at the least amused of the situation. Raph was on top of Mikey and biting his shell like a rabid animal, while Mikey was trying to escape Raph’s tiny hands of wrath.

“Raph’s biting Mikey.”

“I'll get Raph, Donnie go save Mikey.. Watch out for the teeth.”

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Leo knew how to take care of little brother, but a baby was something else, it was something Leo didn’t think he would experience. He was even more surprised how easily Master Splinter was able to handle the new addition to their family.

Leo had been appointed the babysitter while the guys went scavenging with Splinter for any baby items. It has been about a couple of days after they decided that the baby was now part of their family. Leo couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of having another turtle in the family.

As Leo was zoning out, the baby he was supposed to be watching was coming towards him slowly. The hatchling was trying its best to not make a sound, until it was near enough Leo to touch his shell. When the hatchling made contact with the shell Leo had already turned his head to face the baby.

“How did you get here?” Leo asked as he picked up the baby.

“Chirp”

“Of course, I understood that,” Leo said as he held the baby to his face, at which the baby decided to boop Leo's nose. “Chirp chirp!” The hatchling chirped happily. Leo was getting attacked by cuteness and he couldn’t handle it. The hatchling didn’t notice Leo having a cuteness breakdown, so he kept on booping his nose and chirping at the same time.

‘Boop’ followed by a happy “Chirp”.

Leo put the baby down, but the booping still kept going. Leo was defeated and his heart was taken. He was now ready to commit mass property damage to keep his baby brother happy.

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Raph didn’t know what to think of the situation. Everything happened so fast, one moment he and his brothers were exploring the abandoned tunnels and next thing he knows they have a new baby brother. Raph didn’t have time to let that settle in him, but now that everybody else was sleeping after a tiring week of figuring out how to take care of a turtle baby.

As Raph was getting comfortable in his bed, he felt somebody next to him. He turned his head around to meet the tot who blinked back at him.

“What are you doing here?” Raph got up, “You can’t be here, you have your own bed.”

But the hatchling wouldn’t listen, already deciding the best resting place was Raph’s bed. Raph tried to protest, but he didn’t have the strength to do it, so the hatchling got easily next to Raph and laid down.

“Alright then,” Raph laid back down to sleep now with a baby.

As he stayed there he could feel the baby getting closer to him. Raph already had a protective brother mode for his brother, but now for his youngest brother he would do anything for him, even terrorism or blackmail.

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Mikey wouldn’t describe himself as someone who gets jealous easily, his brothers disagreed, but this wasn’t about them. Mikey liked to get attention from the others and being the so-called youngest in the family helped a lot with that. Now with the new baby in the family, he felt like he wasn’t getting the attention he wanted. You could call him selfish for it, but he didn’t want to feel alone.

Right now Mikey was with the baby, since others were training. Mikey kept looking at the baby, observing its features.

“No wonder everyone is around you all the time, you are so tiny and helpless,” Mikey reached out to take the baby's fingers, “you can’t hold anything in these fingers.”

The Baby looked up at Mikey curling his tiny fingers around Mikey’s and giving a little question chirp. Mikey’s heart could and would not handle it.

“Why are you so sweet?” Mikey asked while starting to tear up.

The baby gave a worried chirping sound and tightened his hold on Mikey’s fingers, which made Mikey actually cry. Mikey might have kind of understood where his protective tendencies came from, but now he fully understood and was willing to commit any crime to protect his baby brother.

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Donnie was extremely curious about their new family member, I mean you don’t get a chance to see a baby mutant turtle everyday. So naturally Donnie kept observing the baby. From what he found the hatchling was at least one year old and he had an uncanny ability to just stay, when told to.

“Chirp?”

“Hm? Oh hi, what are you doing here?” Donnie lowered down to look at the hatchling.

“Chirp, chirp!” The hatchling chirped with joy.

“You’re so cute, but it would be amazing if you could also talk to us,” Donnie said with a sigh.

“Chirp.. Chirp..Do” The hatchling kept twitching its mouth until it made another sound. Donnie’s eyes widened when he heard the sound. This proved to him that the hatchling could understand them to a large extent.

“That's right, keep going little one.” Donnie encourages the hatchling, who was trying to figure out sounds.

“Don?” The hatchling said as he looked up to Donnie, who was now feeling his heart being stolen.

“Chirp?!” A worried chirp woke Donnie from his shock, he could now feel the tiny hands on his face. Donnie hadn’t noticed when he started to cry, but he didn’t have time for that as the hatchling kept saying Don over and over again. As Donnie became more and more happy, at that moment he promised himself if anything bad happens to his youngest brother he is going to commit arson.

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Splinter knew life is something that is unpredictable, but even he wasn’t prepared for the new hatchling. It took a while to find a new rhythm in his life, but after a week the new family member started to feel more of a part in their makeshift family.

Splinter was looking over his book collection while his sons were sleeping. He was holding the youngest to his chest while he looked over his option, now thinking about it he should name the little one. Splinter took out his artist book and started to skim through the book, nothing catching his attention, until he found another renaissance artist.

*Sebastiano*

It is perfect and it fits with the family naming convention. Splinter turned to look at his sleeping son.

“Your name shall be Sebastiano,” After Splinter said those words it felt final, like they truly gained another member. Sebastiano moved closer to Splinter and opened his eyes to stare at Splinter. Splinter stared back with kindness in his eyes, Sebastiano chirped and then got back to sleeping. Splinter has only known Sebastiano for a week, but he would do anything for him.

Chapter Text

Remember to be a true ninja, you must become one with the shadows. Darkness gives the ninja power, while light reveals the ninja’s presence," Splinter has taught them that since they were kids, everyone in the family has an inhumane ability to stealth anywhere and whenever they need to.

“Can you extinguish this flame without revealing yourselves?” Splinter flipped the candle from his staff to his hand.

Sebastiano looked from the ceiling pipes towards Splinter, who was now holding a candle. Seb, as his brother loved to call him, is also a ninja of the shadows, but not the best one, unlike his brothers. As he watched his older brother Donatello try to get the flame, but failed as Splinter moved his hand down. But not too far from them.

“Too noisy, Donatello,” Splinter said as he was getting ready for Mikey who was running towards him. Splinter tripped him sending Mikey slamming towards
Donnie.

“Too clumsy, Michelangelo,” Splinter continued, now feeling the presence of Raph behind him. Splinter dodged Raph, who was now getting ready to fight him and ran towards Splinter. Splinter also tripped him towards the other two.

“Poor choice, Raphael,” Splinter said, now standing up.

Seb dropped from the ceiling, and jumped towards Master Splinter. But he was quickly caught, and Splinter dodged him without any effort. Before Seb could turn around to try again Splinter used his stick to push him towards his brothers. Raph caught him before he could fall on top of them.

Seb mumbled a quiet thank you, while Raph put him down.

“Too slow, Sebastiano,” Splinter was facing his four sons who were looking back at him. Seb watched from the side as his oldest brother also dropped from the ceiling, while simultaneously cutting the candle to pieces and snuffing out the flame.

Splinter turned the light turned back on, as the four brothers who failed were getting up. Seb helped Mikey who was stuck between Raph and Don.

“Well done, Leonardo,” Splinter said with pride.

“Teacher's pet,” Raphael mocked.

“Ninja dropout,” Leo mocked back, while Donnie and Mikey were wooing the situation. Splinter's pride was quickly turned to annoyance when Leo and Raph started to argue.

“My sons *deep sigh of a tired father*, if you are to become a true ninja you must work harder,” Seb could feel the lecture coming from Splinter, so while everyone sat down, he sat next to Mikey.

“Your path in life will not be an easy one,” Seb felt the bug flying around him and Mikey’s eyes.

“It will not be an easy one, the outside world will not be a friendly place for you. You five are different in ways the surface dwellers would never understand. To survive, you must master these skills I teach you,” Seb could now feel and hear Mikey trying to kill the bug, he was still mainly focused on Splinter lecture, but Mikey was making it difficult.

“Ninjutsu powers of stealth and secrecy, you must become kage, shadow warriors and you must never be discovered by the outside world.” The bug landed on Seb’s head and he felt Mikey’s hand slap his head. “Ow”

“Oh sorry, Sebbs,” Mikey said apologetically.

The whole room started to shake and the sound of metallic walking was very clear. “Huh, what is that noise?” Splinter looked around as small rocks were falling off their ceiling. Seb went closer to Splinter, taking his hand as a way for Seb to comfort himself.

“Wooaw, an earthquake,” Mikey moved closer to Donnie.

“In New York? Possible, but not likely,” Donnie said.

Then the wall before broke and metallic creatures started to come inside their home. Some of them kept on eating the support systems of their home. Splinter moved Seb behind him and said to be ready to fight. Seb looked at his older brothers who were already fighting the metallic creatures and the creatures seemed to be easily destroyable. Seb took out his su-yari, which in Mikey’s words is a staff with a knife on its end.

Seb took action and attacked the first creature who came near him. He stabbed its head and it was destroyed. Master Splinter was next to him as they fought off the horde of metallic creatures. The creatures had small bodies with big heads that had sharp teeth, they also were tiny only going up to Seb's knees. Master Splinter was decimating the creatures with his staff, while Seb was slicing them and keeping a distance.

“Crunch”

Seb looked up and saw more of those creatures, but they were now eating the ceiling and the cracks were growing bigger.

“Come my son, we need to leave,” Splinter said as he took Seb's hand and moved them away from the falling rocks and home. They made it out relatively uninjured, with only a couple of bruises and cuts.

Both of them started to look around, but saw no sight of the others or the metallic creatures. Then they heard Splinter's shell cell ring, Splinter quickly answered, but he didn’t understand how the phone worked. So Seb had to look as his father was trying to figure out the damn thing.

“Dad, I think you already answered it,” Seb said after a few seconds.

“Ah, I see now,” Splinter put the phone to his ear. “Leonardo, whatever those mechanical menaces are, they have managed to eat through the support structure of our home, we must leave right away… Yes, Sebastiano is with me,” Splinter said with his normal calmness that helped Seb to relax. “Meet us at the old drainage junction south point,” Splinter ended the call and looked down at Seb.

“We should start leaving now, my son,” Seb nodded and took Splinter's hand as they started their journey through the sewers.

As they were walking from one tunnel to another in silence, while looking around to make sure nothing was following them. It didn’t take them long to reach the destination point, now all they had to do was wait.

“I can’t prove it, but I feel that my brothers are doing something stupid,” Seb said after a few minutes of waiting.

“I also sense it, my son. It seems as though they are in trouble,” Splinter answered calmly, “they are my sons after all, you do not need to worry too much, my son.”

They heard the sound of cracking from underneath them, Seb was already alert and ready for action as he had his weapon ready for any attack. Five creatures rose from the ground and headed towards Master Splinter, one of them was able to rip a piece from his clothing.

Seb destroyed the nearest to him by slicing the heads of their robotic bodies. The fighting did last long and there were only two creatures left that Splinter took out easily.

The ground below Splinter started to break and before Seb could do anything Splinter was already falling off. Seb ran towards the hole and looked down if he could see Splinter.

“Father!” Seb screamed in desperation, as he looked down at the darkness. Terror claws itself on Seb as he continued to stare at the abyss.

“I’m alright, my son! You can also jump!” Splinter answered Seb right away, snapping Seb out of his fear.

Seb took a moment to himself and decided that the best thing to do was to jump after Splinter. When Seb hit the bottom he was met with Splinter to his relief. They moved a little further into the tunnels until they found an abundant area.

“As you see, my son, change is good,” Splinter said.

“Guys, are going to love this place,” Seb said with excitement, before starting to look around as his father looked fondly towards him.

“My son, I understand that you are excited, but we must wait for your brothers,”

“I know dad, but I want to choose my room first,” Seb said as he kept looking around going higher. Until he found a little secret room that had a small entrance, but it had a lot of space. Seb took out one of his kunai and threw it at the door, so that it would stick to it. Going down was easy and Seb was once again next to his father as they climbed their way back to the junction.

“I see that you have found a room for yourself,” Splinter said as they were waiting for the others.

“Yes, dad. It looks small from the outside, but there's so much space when you go in it. It’s perfect,” Seb said with a smile.

Now the two were waiting for the others once again, thankfully no one came to fight them this time. After at least fifteen minutes, they heard a sound. Seb turned to look at the entrance and saw a truck speeding up towards them. He knew it was his brother from the way the truck moved. It kept hitting everything in its path, making a lot of noise.

When the stolen car stopped, Seb’s brothers came out of the truck, greeting him and Master Splinter. Mikey sprinted out of the car and tackled Seb to the ground. The others went to hug Master Splinter.

“Well, I’m glad to see you too, my sons,” Splinter said.

“Master Splinter, so much has happened today,” Leo said as he watched Raph trying to get Mikey off Seb, who was now trying to claw himself out of Mikey’s hug prison.

“Yes, yes, there will be time to tell me all about it later Leonardo,” Splinter started to walk towards the whole, “but first I wish to take you all home.”

“Home?” Mikey raised his head to look at Master Splinter, at which point Seb was finally able to leave the hug.

“Yeah, Splinter and I found a new home,” Seb dusted himself and followed Master Splinter to the hole. “I already found my room, so don’t take it.”

The others looked between themselves before looking back at Master Splinter and Seb. Seb jumped inside the hole first followed quickly by Splinter. Seb moved to the side to watch as his older brother fell through the hole giggling to himself. Mikey ran up to Splinter to ask questions, but he didn’t get answers to any of them.

“So what’s this new home like?” Mikey turned to look at Seb.

“You'll see,” Seb answered with a grin.

“Gosh, you and Splinter, always so mysterious,” Mikey sighed.

They made their new home, where the older brothers admired the area, before running off to choose a room. Seb and Splinter watched as the brothers went to explore. Seb noticed that Mikey was getting closer to his room, so naturally Seb went to Mikey.

“So this is your room,” Mikey said as he touched the shuriken.

“Yep. Go find your own, I already marked it,” Seb said. He then watched as Mikey went to claim almost half the lair as his own. Seb went to join the others as they gathered around Splinter.

“Let’s see you boys clean up, for a change, this chamber is filthy,” Splinter turned around as his sons whined, but had no choice in the matter.

As they were gathering the broken pieces of the wall, Seb realized something.

“You guys stole that truck didn’t you,” Seb turned to look at his older brothers who froze on the spot.

“Yeah, but they were stealing money,” Mikey said defensively.
“Are you disappointed?” Raph asked as he watched Seb.

“No way, I was just surprised you managed to find one,” Seb could feel the other relax. “To be honest, I know you well enough that you wouldn’t steal from a regular civilian.. Did you steal it from the Mafia?”

“No. They were a gang called The Purple Dragons,” Donnie answered.

“They sound lame,” Seb said, while the others chuckled.

“Oh yeah, there were also other ninjas,” Mikey said.

“Other than us?”

“Other than us. They were well trained,” Leo answered. “I hope they won’t be trouble in the future.”

“Doubt that,” Raph made eye contact with others.

“At least we got a new home,” Seb said, as the others nodded in agreement.

Chapter Text

Seb was organizing his things in his new room. He had a lot to unpack, since Raph and Leo were thankfully able to find almost everything, like his notebooks and art supplies.

He was moving his bed in the corner, when he heard Raph and Leo return from the last scavenger hunt in their old home.

Seb ran from his room to the main area and was greeted by Leo, who threw Seb, his old stuffed animal.

“You found Mr. Tortoise!” Seb grinned as he took it to his room, missing the smile Leo was having. Seb decided to put Mr. Tortoise on the bed, where he belongs with the pillows.

Seb jumped off his floor to join his family. As Seb got closer, he could hear the TV, but couldn’t make out the words. As he got closer, Seb saw Raphael destroy one of the TV’s and start to walk away. Splinter stopped him before he could make it far.

Seb could now hear the TV, but couldn’t see, since Don covered his eyes when the mousers went to hunt the rats. Seb could feel Don’s nervousness, so he didn’t fight back.

“Well, my sons, we need to unpack the rest of the furniture. Leonardo and Raphael have brought,” Splinter said as he walked to the hoverboard. No one complained, but everyone had a lot on their minds. It didn’t take long for the furniture to be organized.

It was time for his older brothers' combat training. Seb watched from the sofa as his brother battled against Splinter, they were getting better and faster. Seb would sometimes join them if Splinter allowed, but for most part he didn’t get to join. He didn’t complain though, because he got to train with Splinter alone, but it was a lot more fun to train with his brothers.

After his brother’s training ended, Splinter looked at Seb.

“After 1 hour it's your turn to train, my son,” Splinter then went to his room. Seb moved away, so that Mikey could lay on the sofa.

“Seb, can you help me with these Mouser parts?" Don asked.

“Sure,” Seb walked to Don, who was now examining one of the mouser's legs.

The hour went past rather quickly, Seb and Don now understood the mousers better, but not fully. They even got one of the mousers to work, before Splinter called Seb for training, and he quickly left to train with him.

“Your form is too dense for a ninja, relax a bit,” Splinter advised.

“Yes, Master Splinter,” Seb said as he relaxed his stance.

They are training in Splinter's new dojo, since there are only two of them and Splinter is primarily focused on his form. It has been 1 hour since the training started, Splinter was happy with Seb's forms, so they have moved to meditation. Seb enjoys meditation with Splinter, he finds it somewhat relaxing. Then they hear a noise.

“I wonder what that is,” Splinter got up and moved to open the door and stopped.

“Is everything okay, dad?” Seb moved next to Splinter to see what he was watching. “Is that a human?” Seb looked at the unconscious women.

“It’s not what it looks like!” Mikey said.

“Well, what does it look like?” Splinter asked, as he narrowed his eyes.

“Master Splinter we can explain,” Leo raised his hands.

“Why did you guys kidnap a random person?” Seb moved closer to the unconscious lady.

“She was being chased by those metallic menaces,” Raph moved the pillows, so Mikey could put the women on the sofa.

“Should I bring blankets?” Seb asked.

“Yes, please,” Donnie said.

While Seb was bringing blankets, he heard screaming and a sound of fainting. When Seb came back he saw that everything was okay, but Leo was having a mental breakdown and his whole family was trying to figure out what happened.

“Did she faint?” Seb put the blanket on the women.

“Yeah. . Her name is April by the way,” Donnie said as he comforted Leo.

“Somebody wake me up, when April wakes up,” Mikey put on his headphones.

It took about four hours before she woke up again, this time she was a lot calmer than before. Leo managed to calm April down after a lot of promises of no harm and that she was safe. Leo was trying his best to calm down April, while the rest of the family was just staring at her. Seb stayed behind Raph, when April woke not wanting to be seen, Raph didn’t protest it. He in fact used his body to cover Seb.

At some point April calmed down enough to talk partially thanks to the tea Leo made. Donnie went to get Mikey.

Splinter made April promise that she wouldn’t tell anyone of their existence, because it would endanger them. Splinter also decided to tell April about their origin, well his father’s and his older brothers’ origin. Seb already knew the story, because Splinter loved to tell this story. Seb focused on April, she seemed trustworthy, but it was too early to say for sure. After Splinter had told April the story, she turned to look at Seb.

“What about him, you didn’t mention him in your story,” April asked with confusion as she pointed at Seb.

“We found him from the trash and just kept him,” Mikey leaned against the couch.

“Actually, we never figured out Sebastiano’s origin. It’s kind of an unsolved mystery,” Leo said as he pat Seb on the shoulder.

“Oh, all right, then,” April said.

“Guys look at this,” Mikey pointed at the TV, which was showing a bank robbery.

April watched the new reposter tell the story of the robbery and started to piece things together.

“This must be what I heard Dr. Stockman talking about. He’s got the mousers robbing banks,” April turned around facing the turtles and Splinter.

“What do you know about this Stockman guy?” Raph asked.

“He’s a genius, he’s also nuts. I used to work for him, but when I got suspicious he turned the mousers on me,” April said with annoyance, “Luckily I ran into you guys.” April continued.

“He destroyed our old lair,” Leo inserted.

“Must have been one of his mouser test runs,” April concluded.

“But that was our home,” Mikey frowned.

“He also destroyed our stuff,” Seb added.

“Now he’s graduated to banks,” Donnie said.

“And what are we waiting for? I say we shut down mouser central, permanently,” Raph got up and was ready to fight.

“I just love those action movie lines, you write those yourself?” Mikey grinned.

“It won’t be easy. Stocktronics is rigged with the latest up to the minute security tech,” April said, while Mikey brought Donnie forward.

“Bring it on. Allow me to introduce our very own secret weapon: the techno turtle himself, Donatello! Take a bow, Don,” Mikey introduced Donny.

“Cut it out,” Donnie grinned.

Seb could feel that Raph was vibrating from the need to fight something, so he took a couple of steps back and watched as Raph almost exploded from waiting.

“Yes of course, right Master Splinter?” Leonardo asked.

“I want to keep you safe, but it seems as though you have a job to do. Very well my sons, you have my blessing to leave, but return soon,” Splinter moved closer to Seb, “But you stay with me.” Seb nodded a little disappointed.

His brothers and April left pretty soon, after that. Donnie even took his bag that was ready for everything. Seb and Master Splinter said goodbye as they watched the team leave.

“Do you think they will be fine?” Seb asked.

“They are your brothers and they have little help, so I would say they will be fine,” Splinter said.

“Why did you trust April, dad?” Seb moved Closer to Splinter, “Don’t get me wrong she seems trustworthy, but how can you tell an enemy from an ally?”

“It will take time and everything won’t be as simple as it is now, but, my son, you will need to trust your gut,” Splinter said as he placed his hand on Seb’s shell, “Now we have to wait for your brothers and our new ally.”

---------------------

After about an hour of waiting and preparing tea and biscuits, Splinter heard his sons and April coming. Seb had fallen asleep during their meditation. Splinter lightly nudges Seb to wake up.

“So my sons, you have returned, I assume things went well,” Splinter smiled.

“Everything went fine Master Splinter,” Leonardo said.

“We blew up a lab!” Mikey grinned.

“You what?” Seb blinked at Mikey who just smiled. Seb turned to look at Don and Raph to say Mikey was wrong, but they nodded.

“Master Splinter, can you turn on the TV? I think there is going to be a surprise,” April said with a mischievous grin.

Master Splinter turned around and put the TV on, which showed the destruction of Stocktronics and the disappearance of Baxter Stockman.

“what will you do now, Miss O’neil, you are most definitely out of a job,” Splinter asked worriedly.

“I’m not exactly sure,” April answered.

“We’ll help you get back on your feet,” Donnie comforted April.

“You guys, you’ve all been. Well great and by guys I guess, I mean five big talking turtles and a giant talking rat,” April smiled.

Seb watched as the new team cheered and started to party. It has been a while since the whole family could celebrate something. Seb joined the fun for a little while, before he grew tired and moved to the side. April joined him later on.

“I guess, you are the youngest family member,” April said.

“Oh, what gave it away?” Seb answered sarcastically.

“Nothing,” April looked at Seb’s family, “you have a very nice family.”

“Yeah.”

“Not to bother, but you genuinely, don’t know your origin?”

“I was a baby back then, any memory I could have had is long gone,” Seb rubbed his eyes, “I don’t really care all that much. The most possible theory is the one where the mutagen fell on top of me at some point and I fell into the box.”

“Seems logical. Who came up with it?”

“Donnie and Splinter, they looked at the box I came from and concluded that was the most likely possibility.”

“What about your mask? Your older brothers have their signature color, but you have black. Is there a reason.”

“I haven’t gotten my color yet,” Seb answered.

“You get the color?”

“Something like that, but I also have to like the color, so it might take a while. That's why I have a black mask. It’s kind of the default.”

“That's interesting.”

Both of them settled on a comfortable silence as they watched the older brothers play fight each other. April was thinking about all that has happened and how her life has changed in a span of like 6 hours. Before she could go deeper into her thoughts she heard something.

“Chirp”

It sounded happy, April turned to look at Seb who was laughing at his brothers. April knew enough about biology to figure out where the sound came from. After a few seconds, she noticed Seb stopped and started to turn red. April moved her head, so it would seem like she didn’t notice and it worked. April knew things were going to be different, but she could live with that. Also she thought that the chirp was the cutest thing ever.

Chapter Text

Seb watched as Mikey and Raph fought against each other, even if Raph was the strongest one physically, Mikey would just get under his skin and win. Seb was pretty sure that was Mikey’s secret weapon. As the battle kept on going, Seb decided to go to the kitchen to get a light snack. When he returned he saw Raph about to beat the shell off Mikey, luckily Leo was there in time to stop that from happening.

Seb ate the snack and ran up to his family, but before he could get to them Raph was already running away.

“Is he going to be okay?” Seb asked.

“My son, your older brother has a rage inside him that he will have to learn to control,” Splinter said, while he was walking away.

“Are you okay Mikey?” Seb turned to Mikey.

“Yeah, I'll be fine. Oh yeah Donnie, about that battle shell. What ya think?” Mikey said.

“Mikey, I have work to do,” Donnie walked away, but Mikey followed him. Leaving only Leo and Seb to the main area.

“I got snacks, do you want one?” Seb asked.

“Thanks,” Leo eats the snack in one bite, “I’m going to go training, do you want to come?”

“Not today.”

“Okay, see you soon.”

Seb went after Mikey and Donnie. When he got there Donnie was commanding Mikey to do something.

“Seb, do me a favor and look after Mikey,” Don went back to work.

“Okay, sure,” Seb started to follow Mikey around the lair. Trying to figure out a place to hang the ‘Sewer Sweet Sewer' sign.

“Seb, do you think this is the right spot?” mikey asked after a while of walking and looking around.

“It looks fitting,” Seb said.

“Hold the sign, your big brother is going to nail this wall.”

Mikey took the hammer and tried to hammer the nail to the wall unsuccessfully.

“What is this wall made of?” Mikey asked.

“Maybe you need a bigger hammer?”

“You're a genius Seb,” Mikey said as he ran to get a bigger hammer. This time it worked. Mikey smiled at Seb, while Seb watched horrified as the wall started to crumble.

“Mikey, move!” Seb yelled.

“What? Why?” Mikey looked behind him. “Oh, that's why.” He jumped away from the crumbling wall.

“What happened!” Leo ran up to Mikey and Seb with Splinter by his side.

“Don, look what I found!” Mikey yelled.

“That is a door of some kind,” Don commented.

“Be careful,” Leo said.

Donnie touched the door and it opened without any issue, but there was a horrible smell coming from it. They stepped inside the lair, after which the door closed and it started to move up, like an elevator. Next time the doors opened they were on the surface in some kind of abandoned warehouse. Mikey was making his plans of getting a battle bus known to everyone present.

They got back to the elevator and went back down to the lair.

“I think this elevator needs music,” Seb said.

“I agree with Seb, we could put the classical elevator music or the punk music. Which one do you guys prefer?” Mikey asked.

“I could install a speaker phone, here or a camera, but putting music here is something that could lead us to being found,” Donnie said.

Then the elevator doors opened and they saw Raph coming back. Seb instinctually went to hug Raph, who just picked him up as he walked to the rest of the family and apologized to Mikey. Raph promised to tell what happened to him during dinner.

“So you fought a skull man, who beat you up for trying to calm him down,” Seb said.

“Something like that, but he is not a bad guy,” Raph defended.

“Oh, for sure,” Seb frowned.

“Come on buddy, it isn’t that serious, come on smile for me,” Raph punched Seb’s shoulder, who gave him a forced grin.

“Good job for being responsible,” Leo said.

“Well, thank you fearless.”

The next morning when Seb woke up, he noticed that his older brothers were not in the lair, except for Master Splinter.

“Morning my son, if you are looking for your brother they are in the garage.”

“Thanks dad,” Seb walked to the elevator and went up to the garage. Where he saw his brother working on the truck.

“Do you guys need any help?” Seb walked closer.

“Sure, Seb. Can you add those guns back to the truck?” Donnie asked.

“Okay,” Seb said.

The rest of the week was used to build the truck, until it was finished on friday night.

“Can I please come with you guys,” Seb asked with puppy eyes.

“Come on Leo, Splinter hasn’t said anything about bringing Seb with us and he helped to build it,” Raph said.

“Fine, but you don’t get out of the truck until it's safe, we don’t need bad guys knowing about you,” Leo said.

“Let’s roll then guys!” Donnie said, as everyone got to their seat.

The view from the car was very nice and Seb kept admiring the outside world and asking Mikey what everything was. He heard Raph leaving, but was more focused on the tall buildings that reached the sky.

When they got to the park, they saw Raph and his ‘friend’ being surrounded by The Purple Dragons.

“Okay, guys formation C and Seb stay in the Truck,” Leo commanded.

Seb closed the back door and locked it just in case after his brothers left. He moved to the driver's seat and proceeded to watch his brothers kicking some shells. The Purple Dragons were no match for his brothers and Raph’s ‘friend’.

The fighting was soon over and Leo gave Seb a sign that he could come out from the truck, but to stay in the shadows. So Seb decided to lower the windshield to show himself

“Woah there is another one with you, why is he so small? Is he a lizard?” Casey asked.

“Why would you want to know ape man?” Seb said back.

“What did you just call me, lizard?”

“I’m a turtle, you ignorant ape.”

“I’m gonna beat you up, little man.”

“Come on then, I’ll bust your kneecaps!”

Seb closed the windshield, as Casey was trying to break in and was screaming like a maniac. Smirking, while Casey screamed louder and tried to get in the van.

The rome ride had been a little awkward after Seb flipped off Casey, while they drove away.

Chapter Text

The five brothers made their way to April’s new house and shop with Casey. Seb was excited to be out of the sewers, but he wasn’t happy about Casey being with them. Still there was no way he was going to miss the opportunity, even if Casey Jones was here.

Seb was the last one at the door, behind Casey. Who was awestruck by April.

“Move it Casey, I don’t wanna be seen by hooligans like you,” Seb shouted, which woke up Casey from his daydreaming and he moved. Seb then turned to look at April and said, “Hi, April.”

“Well hi there, you could help me organize those books, they are all over the place.” April said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Seb gave a little salute and he walked to the bookshelves. He heard Casey say something, but decided to ignore it.

The task in itself wasn’t hard and Seb could do it easily, it took him like 40 minutes to finish. Moving and organizing the book was easy but trying to avoid getting hit by the moving furniture was a pain, especially when Casey and Raph couldn’t decide where to put them.

“Hey April, do you need help with anything else?”

“Wow, you're fast, well could you take out these items from their boxes and put them on display.”

“Sure, I can do that,” This one took longer than the first one. Before any of them knew it. It was night time and Seb was excited, since Splinter gave them permission to stay the night, because April was worried about the burglaries that were happening.

For the most part the brothers ate chips and watched TV. There was a horror movie on the TV that Seb had seen with Mikey many times.

It was boring for the most part, but Seb still paid attention to it. Listening to his brothers’ talk amongst each other. Seb slowly but surely fell asleep on top of Leo on the sofa.

Leo looked at Seb who was leaning against him and moved Seb a little so that he wouldn’t have back pains when he woke up, before also falling asleep.

----------
*CRASH*

Leo woke up, jumping up a little, waking up Seb in the process.

“What is it Leo?” Seb rubbed his eyes.

“I don’t know, but you stay here and protect April,” Leo went to wake up his other brothers. Then they went downstairs to check what was going on. While Seb fixed his mask and took his yari.

“Hey, did you hear any noise?” April asked tiredly.

“Yep, they went to check it.”

April nodded, looking out the window to see nothing. She hummed to herself, before descending downstairs, Seb followed her, ready to fight. When they got to the store, they both noticed most of the jewelry was stolen. Then they made their way to the back alley, where they saw Seb’s brothers fighting a robot.

“What was that thing?” April asked, but before anyone could give her an answer she ran up to Casey to help him get up. Donnie noticed the moving object and started to examine it.

Donnie figured out that it was mostly made of nanobots, who could reproduce and make copies of itself. Their weakness is extreme heat.

“Seb protect the antique shop, while we are hunting this down, love you,” Mikey said.

“Love you guys too, bye,” Seb smiled, he then turned around to see Casey and his smile was gone.

“I guess we are in this together, tiny,” Casey said with annoyance.

“Same goes to you, idiot.”

April came back with cookies a little bit later.

“Seb can you look for what's missing while I help Casey?” She asked.

“Sure,” Seb said as he got up and started to look around the shop.

About half of the rings were stolen and a couple of masks, but nothing else, when he went to tell April. Seb saw the two fighting, Seb chose life and backed away to the kitchen, where he started to make hot coco

“HOW DARE YOU, JONES!?!”

“Oh, DON’T COME AT ME WITH THE BS!”

Seb listened to Casey and April argue for a whole hour. He learned quite a few ways to curse out someone's bloodline, but nothing else.

Seb heard the Shellraiser parked outside, so he came out of the kitchen.

“Don’t try to stop them, they have been fighting almost the whole time,” Seb said tiredly. His brother looked at him, before Leo came next to him and rubbed his back.

“I know it must have been hard to listen to them argue,” Leo said.

“It was fun actually, but I didn’t want to be part of it,” Seb leaned on Leo, as they watched Casey and April start to cuss out one another. Just then Leo covered Seb’s ears.

Chapter Text

Seb was watching a TV show, when the blackout happened. It wasn’t anything new at this point, but it is still annoying. Splinter was near him with the candle and when he asked his sons to investigate the situation. After they left, Splinter gave Seb some tea and decided to teach Seb something.

“I think it is the perfect time to exercise your spiritual side, Sebastiano,” Splinter sat down. Seb followed him and took a meditation stand.

“Now my son, you need to focus on your inner side, feel it and be one with it,” Splinter advised.

Seb has done this before and knows the way. So finding his inner mind was no problem, but he has always had issues connecting to his spiritual side. Sometimes it felt like it didn’t exist to him, he could feel his brothers' spiritual sides. Seb has tried many times to connect to his spiritual side, but it has never worked and it will not work this time either.

Seb opened his eyes, “I didn’t succeed this time either, Dad.”

Before Splinter could say anything, the older brothers returned with news. Taking away Splinters attention. They explained what happened to them, apparently they went to the museum, where they saw some ninjas steal a sword. But they managed to get a symbol from the ninjas.

“What does the symbol mean, Master Splinter?” Leonardo asked.

“Trouble.”

“You know something about these ninjas. Where do they come from? Who do they work for?” Raph asked.

“And what do they want with a magic sword?” Mikey asked.

“Nope, not magic, probably more like a self-perpetuating oscillation frequency generator,” Donnie explained.

“Uh, in english, Einstein,” Mikey said.

“It packs a shockwave that’ll knock you flat on your shell,” Donnie simplified.

“We gotta go after these creeps,” Raph demanded.

“No. A wise ninja does not seek out an enemy he does not fully understand,” Splinter said.

“But sensei bushido demands that we fight for honor and justice and-” Leo argued.

“Bushido also demands that you honor your master’s wishes. I will meditate
upon this matter further. Good night,” Splinter interrupted.

Seb watched as Splinter left for his own room.

“You guys, just keep on getting in trouble, don’t you.” Seb said, looking at his older brothers with a disappointed face.

“At this point it is a curse,” Leo said.

Donnie started to move towards his laboratory to research the symbol. Everyone followed him there, but after a while Leo, Raph and Mikey went to do their own thing. Seb and Donnie were now the ones who kept looking for new information in the laboratory for hours. They didn’t have much luck, but Donnie managed to find another blackout that should be investigated. Leo tried to stop the other, but failed miserably.

“I see my sons have left to do what they do best,” Splinter walked next to Seb, who just said goodbye to them.

“Dad!” Seb shrieks, “When did you get behind me?”

“A master ninja doesn’t tell his tricks. Now my son, let's try it one more time.”

“But dad, we have done this spiritual meditation for years now and we haven’t seen any improvement,” Seb says as he continues to follow Splinter, “I don’t even have any way to access it. At this point I doubt I will ever be able to even feel spiritual energy from within me.”

“My son, you can feel it around you and we can work with that. But I was thinking about training your moves.”

“Oh, sorry. Dad… You could have just told me and not make it ominous.”

Splinter looked smug at that moment and Seb knew that these misleading sentences were not over. At this point Seb thought Splinter wanted them to read his mind. They made their way to the training ground.

“Sebastiano, take out your su-yari,” Splinter advised as he waited for Seb to be ready, “Good, Hajime.”

Seb moved his yari from one side to another, trying to make Splinter lose his balance. Splinter was now behind him and knocked him to the ground. He waited for Seb to get up to continue, before starting another round.

Splinter and Seb have fought each other countless times, Seb knew all of Splinter’s moves and could strategize on a fly. But it wouldn't be enough to guarantee a victory. After Seb's seventh loss, Splinter decided that it was enough.

“Master Splinter, look what we got!” Mikey shouted from the entrance.

Splinter turned around and was surprised by what his sons brought with them. Seb was too tired to move to greet them, so he just laid on the ground as the other talked about the sword. After a while Seb had gathered enough strength to move around.

Since everyone had gone on their way to either investigate about the ninja’s or to train. Seb had a lot of freetime, so he looked and found a beautiful sword. Its design looked old, but it was clean. Seb went to look closer to it, the way the sword shined told him that it had been taken care of. Seb leaned in and touched the sword. The surface felt smooth and the metal part was sharp enough to cut through wood without leaving any signs of struggle. It was also surprisingly warm, but it didn’t burn.

Seb wanted to examine it further, but that idea was cut short when he heard Mikey shouting from another room to help him with something.

“Coming!”

Seb turned to leave and as his hand left the surface of the sword, a little bit of lightning exited from the sword and circled around Seb’s hand, to Seb's oblivion. When Seb walked out of the room the lightning had completely disappeared. There were only small sparks coming off Seb's hand.

Chapter Text

Today Master Splinter decided to teach his sons balance and the art of invisibility by training on top of bamboo in complete darkness. Once again Mikey was not focused on the task at hand, so Master Splinter also added the way of silence into the mix. During the exercise no one noticed Casey coming to the lair, until he knocked down the bamboo.

Seb landed on his face next to Leo and Raph.

“You alright there buddy?” Raph patted Seb’s shell.

“Could be a lot better, but I’m fine,” Seb got up to see Master Splinter attack Casey.

“Go for his kneecaps, dad!” Seb shouted, while grinning.

Seb watched in disappointment as Splinter didn’t hurt Casey. Casey then made eye contact with Seb and showed him the middle finger. Luckily Leo was behind Seb and picked him up before the two would fight. Seb tried to free himself, but failed, in retaliation he flipped Casey off as Leo carried him away. Leo took Seb to his room.

“Seb, I know you don’t like Casey, but please don’t cause any problems while he is here. You can stay in your room as long as he is here,” Leo pleaded.

“Fine, but if he comes to my room, I will-”

“I know, but please act politely. Can you do that for me, Seb?”

“...For you.”

“Thank you,” Leo ruffled Seb's head. “See you soon!”

But it wasn't soon, Casey had been in their house for hours and Seb was becoming hungry. Seb could hear how Casey was destroying their furniture and trashing their home. He hated that man with passion, but he was his brother’s friend, so Seb had to get used to him. He still didn’t understand why they gave him access to the lair.

“Hey, Seb! Casey left!” He heard Mikey shout.

“Finally,” Seb came out of his room. “Mikey, do you have any food?”

“Oh, do I. Do you want chips, popcorn, candy or pizza?”

“Pizza, please.”

“Coming right up, Sebbs.”

It has been an hour since Casey and Raph left. When Casey came back with bad news. He once again disturbed the training and informed that Raph was abducted by invisible ninjas.

Seb now despises Casey, not only does he not have any manners, he destroys their furniture like it's his job, but he also got his older brother abducted. Sure it wasn’t his fault, but shell, does Casey only bring trouble.

“This is all my fault!” Casey destroyed the table.

“It is,” Seb whispered as he watched Casey destroy another piece of furniture.

Donnie was thankfully able to find Raph’s signal, but he was being followed by invisible ninjas. Seb’s brothers and Casey went to save Raph, while he and Splinter stayed behind.

“My son, I understand your dismay with Casey, but with time we will get used to him.”

“As if, dad. Casey is the bane of my existence. . . . . . But I admit he is strong, even if he has nothing inside that brain of his.”

“If you have that much energy, then we shall continue with the exercise.”

“Uuuuuh, fine.”

Splinter and Seb trained for an hour, Seb was starting to get a hand of the way in invisibility, so he decided to try. When his brother returned Seb stayed in the Shadow and examined the scene. To his delight, he found no trace of Casey.

“Did you guys manage to get Casey to leave?” Seb dropped from the ceiling in front of his brothers.

“AH! Oh hi, Seb,” Mikey screamed.

“Nice moves,” Raph said, to which Seb smiled.

“Yeah, Casey is gone,” Donnie said.

“Oh thank shell,” Seb sighed from relief.

“You will get used to Casey,” Leo said.

“No way, I’ll never get used to him,” Seb said.

“Famous, last words,” Donnie shook his head.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Seb glared at Donnie.

“Oh nothing,” Donnie looked away.

Chapter Text

Seb and Donnie were building the remote control system for the battle shell. It needed a few weeks before it was ready to be used. The control was on the table. When Mikey came around to ask about what they were working on, he took the remote controller and pushed it. Now they got a car running wild in their lair.

They did get everything under control, but the lair was smashed and the battle shell needed to be moved to the garage. It wasn’t a big issue, but it was annoying.

Seb was in the garage cleaning the place and looking for something useful, when he heard someone call “Rapheal!” He took out his shell cell and called the others, who came quickly to the scene.

They opened the garage door and saw a human girl with purple hair, her name was Angel and she needed help with saving Casey. The brothers didn’t have enough time to notify Splinter, so they just took Seb with them.

In the car ride Seb was curious about Angel. She is the first person who is even remotly close to his age. But he has to wonder. How does Casey know her.

“How are you related to Casey?” Seb asked.

“Oh, I’m not related to him, he is more like my.. Guardian? I guess. He looks after me and stuff,” Angel answered.

"Casey? . . Really?" Seb asked.

"He's not bad, when you get to know him," Angel said.

Seb looked out of the window, not really trusting Angel's opinion, but Seb couldn't detect any dishonesty.

“What about you, how do you know Casey?” Angel asked, out of the blue.

“He is my brother’s friend. . . I can’t escape that man,” Seb sighed, “he keeps destroying things in our home, so I don’t have time to draw anything.”

“Wait, you draw?” Angel asked.

“Yeah, it helps me relax on things.”

“Same, here. Do you use paints?”

“Oh I wished, but it's hard to get a good painting set, you know.”

“That's the struggle. I-” Before Angel could finnish her sentince Raph cuts in.

“We don’t have time for this, you can talk about art later, but not now,” Raph puts on his clothes, “We need to save Casey.”

“Angel, do we really need these?” Mikey asked.

“If you don’t want to be noticed,” Angel said, then turning to look at Seb, throwing him a hoodie. “Even if you don’t come with us, you still need a disguise if you are protecting this truck.”

When they made it to the Purple Dragon lair, Seb stayed on the driver seat watching the guys leave. The remote controller would get the car to the right place, but it doesn’t take the safest way. So Seb’s job is to stay in the truck and drive after everyone was inside and safe.

Seb looked at the hoodie and decided to put it on. He has worn clothes before, normally during the winter. So wearing it for fun, made Seb feel kind of excited. Even if it does limit his movements the hoodie still felt comfortable. He put the hood on and it covered his whole face. He should ask Angel for some clothing advice.

He waited for sometime, when the noise started to rise inside the warehouse. Seb got ready to be the getaway driver, the remote control system took the lead. The truck crashed through the door, Seb opened the locked doors and drove it towards Casey and Angel, who got in.

Now was time to drive this baby out.

They made some turns, to make sure no one was following them, before Seb gave Donnie the controls.

“You can drive, little man?” Casey asked with surprise.

“When would you like to know, ape boy,” Seb sat next to Angel. “By the way Angel, where did you get this hoodie from? It’s perfect.”

“Oh, I found it from my grandma’s house, you can keep it, if you want.”

“Tell her I said thank you.”

"No, we gotta go back. Seb. When the hell did you learn to drive?" Casey asked. Sounding a little worried.

"Like three months ago. It's not that hard," Seb said, casually as he made a sharp right turn to the nearest alleyway.

"Oh my lord. I could have died," Casey said.

"But you didn't, so quit whining."

". . . You know what," Casey moved Seb out of the drivers seat, "I'm not taking any risks. From this point on I'm driving this dam car."

To say that Seb was shocked would be an understatemeant. He expected Casey to accept that he can drive and leave it at that. He didn't expect Casey to move him out of the driver seat, to protect everybody else. This should have showed Seb that Casey does care about other people and it did. But Seb would have liked not to be humilated in front of the only possible friend.

Luckily Angel didn't care about that and was a lot more interested about Seb being a mutant turtle.

Seb and Angel continued to talk to each other like they were already friends. Casey for was happy for both of them, neither had really people to talk to so this was fine, he told himself. Casey and Seb kept glaring at each other even when Seb said goodbye to Angel. After which the turtle brothers left to go home.

On the way Leo leaned closer and said, "I told you, Casey is not that bad."

Seb wanted to argue, but he couldn't deny reality and what he has seen.

.

.

Somewhat.

Casey is still a pain on his shell.

Chapter Text

Seb likes coming to the garbage sites with his brothers, because he can find a lot of new things there. But this time they have an objective, to find anything that can improve the lair. The theory man as Seb likes to call him, has generously given them a shopping cart to find anything useful.

Seb went off to a different direction than his brothers, who went east, while Seb moved to west. Seb managed to find a couple of circuit boards, phones and a frame of some kind. He went to the truck to find the others. The theory man gave him a notebook as a gift.

Seb helped with carrying blankets and clothing to the homeless people, who were near the fire. He returned to hear the theory of the garbage man. Not really buying the whole theory.

Seb remembers the first time he met the theory man. It was an accident, he was helping his brother scavenge the garbage site, until he felt a new presence with him. He turned around to meet the professor Theory. Seb had almost attacked him, thankfully Donnie was there to clear things up. Seb did apologize to him right after.

The professor was kind to him, but Seb never really tried to get to know him. Although his brothers were close to him, especially Donnie who liked to talk to him and trusted him with a lot of stuff, for Seb theory man was someone he knew, but didn’t relate to.

---------------------------

At home Don was still worried about what the Professor had said, so he, Mikey, Leo and Raph went to check the situation. They came back much later with news about the professor and other homeless people being kidnapped by garbage trucks.

“So garbage trucks have been abducting homeless people,” Seb asked.

“Precisely and they have their base of operation on the garbage land,” Donnie answered.

“Are you guys going to bash some heads?” Seb asked.

“More like smash, but I like where you're going,” Raph punched Seb’s shoulder.

“Well, good luck on the island, I’m going to meet up with Angel,” Seb said.

“When did you get permission to the lair?” Leo raised his brow.

“I didn’t, but Angel promised to come to the garage,” Seb moved to the elevator, “Good luck with the garbage land.” Seb waved as his brothers left.

----------------------

Casey didn’t think he would ever be in this situation, where he would need to babysit Angel and Seb. Angel’s grandma has asked him to look after Angel today, but if he had known he would need to watch Seb. He would have still said yes.

He didn’t like Seb, the kid annoyed him to no end. But he had to admit he was a good driver. He was genuinely surprised to find out Seb could drive anything and he does respect the kid for standing up against him.

Casey looked up to watch Angel and Seb who were now sharing some art knowledge or whatever. Angel seemed to be having the time of her life, Casey smiled at that. Angel hadn’t had many friends before, so maybe she could start having more of them, now that she had Seb to talk to.

Angel had brought some clothes for Seb to try them out. Casey hadn’t seen Seb this happy like ever, to be honest he has never seen Seb happy when he was near him. The hoodies were big, but with Seb’s shell they fit perfectly.

Casey continued to watch as they moved to pants, which were a lot more trickier. But they figured it out, apparently Seb’s shell is not completely fused to his back, so he can slip the pants up easily. Casey doesn’t question it. He doesn’t want to know about it. Soon it was time to leave. Angel gave the clothes to Seb and waved goodbye.

“Did you have fun?” Casey asked.

“Yeah. Seb’s a good kid. . Isn’t he? Casey.” Angel grinned.

Casey groaned into his hands as he took Angel back to her grandma.

Chapter Text

Seb watched from the side lines as his brothers trained with their father. He couldn’t join them because they were more proficient with their weapons, and his su-yari staff needed sharpening. He forgot to do it a couple of days ago, so Master Splinter made him do it, now.

It always felt unfair that he was left behind when they were training, but it also made sense. He is the youngest one and his skills are nowhere near their level. There are perks at being the youngest, but Seb wishes he could be as talented as his brothers and maybe join them one day.

Seb watched as Leo and Master Splinter fought. Splinter tried to teach Leo that weapons are not the only thing that makes a warrior. He was worried when Leo left, the others seemed to share the same notions because they followed Leo.

Master Splinter called Seb to his side to train with his yari. They started their basic training that Seb had memorized. He started with spinning moves, then he trained his strike and block, while Splinter criticized his form. This lasted for a couple of hours. When they were finished, Seb started to wait for his brother.

They weren’t usually this late. They should have at least called by now.

After what felt like forever to Seb, his brothers finally came back. Seb was excited until he saw their stoic expression, even Mikey wasn’t making as many jokes as before.

They had a sword with them, Seb could put his finger on it, but it felt familiar.

Master Splinter didn’t waste any time and took it out of Leo’s grasp and inspected it. Master Splinter looked outraged. A really bad sign in Seb’s opinion.

Splinter sat down close to the entrance and signed his sons to do the same. Seb sat close to Donnie and started to play with his mask tails as Splinter told them about Hamato Yoshi and his murder or murderers. Splinter especially told them about why they shouldn’t trust Oroku Saki.

The guys decided that they were going to give an answer to Oroku Saki about the alliance. Splinter nodded at his sons, then he turned his focus on Sebastiano, who was also looking ready to fight.

“Sebastiano, I know you want to be with your brother. But you are too young to be part of this fight,” Splinter placed his hand on Seb's shoulder, “I do not want you to be associated with this fight, so please do not fight me on this.”

Seb stood there for a moment looking down at the floor. Before raising his head, looking at Splinter and nodded.

Splinter then looked at his older sons, “You four, do not engage with the enemy until I have meditated on this.” Splinter headed for his room.

There was a moment of silence when nothing happened. Then Seb watched as his brother got ready for a fight. They took their weapons and smoke bombs.

“You guys are really going to not wait for Splinter?” Seb leaned against the pillar, not stopping his brothers either.

“This is our fight, so we are going to give Oroku Saki an answer,” Leo said.

Seb didn’t look convinced at all and was starting to worry. This wouldn’t be the first time they left, but they always came back. However this time it was different. This Oroku Saki person sounded especially dangerous and from what Seb could tell had a vendetta against their grandfather. Which gave Seb an idea.

“This is a family matter, right. I should be coming, too,” Seb said, hoping his brothers would take him with them. They had always gone against master Splinter’s wishes, except when it came to his safety apparently.

“Sebbs, we don’t want you fighting in Leo’s messes. So you gotta stay here and protect our home,” Mikey put his hand on Seb’s head. Leo glared at Mikey, but didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, Seb. Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine,” Raph came close to Seb to give him a side hug.

“We won’t be gone for long,” Donnie smiled.

“. . . Fine, but you have to come back home,” Seb looked at his brothers, who were now smirking.

“I promise, we will be fine,” Leo gave Seb the eye smile.

Seb waved them off as they left. He felt pretty uneasy about the whole thing, like it was the beginning of something big.

Seb waited for about twenty minutes later, Splinter came out of his room. He looked around and saw Seb sitting near the exit. Seb looked back at him.

“They left to give Oroku Saki the answer,” Seb turned his attention back to the exit.

“*Heavy sigh* They are my sons after all,” Splinter slapped his head, “but I am glad you stayed here, my son. I know you couldn’t have stopped your brother from doing something this reckless.”

“If you're going to look for them, you should probably take this,” Seb gave splinter the remote controller.

“Thank you, my son,” Splinter started to move, “see you soon.”

“See you too.”

Seb watched his father leave their home and start his quest to find his missing sons. It has been a long time since Seb was alone in the lair. Seb didn’t like it.

Seb knows that he should be with the others, but he was taught by Splinter to stay behind when things got serious. Seb never really questioned it as things were never this serious, however now he felt an urgent need to leave and join his family. But old habits die hard and he was given the order to stay.

What could he do anyways, he was too young to be joining those battles. He could be a burden to his brothers if he tried to fight and got caught and used as
a bargain.

Seb just hoped his family was okay.

Hours passed with no sight of his family, until about 2 to 3 hours later they returned. Seb ran up to them and hugged the closest one to him which was Leo. Leo picked up Seb and rested his head on top of Seb’s.

“Hey, Sebbs. Did you miss, you didn’t get bored while we were gone?” Mikey asked as he leaned on Don.

“Pff, no… Yes,” Seb admitted.

“We’re fine as we promised,” Leo comforted.

“We are not that easily taken out. Bud,” Raph said.

“I know, but I can still be worried,” Seb said.

“My son, do not worry too much, because it will lead to fear and then to anger,” Splinter advised.

“Come on guys, enough with the feelings, let’s get started with the party!” Mikey said.

Chapter Text

Seb had trained with Splinter for the day, so he could take the rest of the day off.

Seb was ready to spend it on drawing something, maybe a dragon or a unicorn. What he did not expect was for Mikey to burst through his room, shouting about superheroes. In retrospect, Seb should have known this would happen.

“You know Silver Century, Sebbs?” Mikey asked excitedly.

“Yeah, the flying superhero,” Seb looked away from his notebook.

“You know how he has that cool super name and a costume.”

Seb looked down at the notebook Mikey was holding, before making eye contact with him, “Do you want me to look at it?” Seb scooped a little to the side so Mikey could fit in his bed.

“Yep!” Mikey showed Seb his drawing of his supercustomer, “What do you think about it?”

Sebbie looked at the drawing, it was a simple drawing of him with a cape-like costume that covered his head and it had a shield shaped as a shell.

“It’s nice, but make sure the cape doesn’t flow too much so it can get caught on something,” Seb said, “also what's your superhero name?”

“Turtle Man!”

“No.”

“Turtle Shield”

“A bit better. . . What about Turtle Titan?”

Mikey looked Seb right into his eyes. Seb saw a smile creep upon Mikey’s face.

“Seb, I love you,” Mikey hugged Seb, “also my cape won’t get caught on anything, because I am the Turtle Titan!”

Seb looked at the drawing again, noticing that there was a logo, “Is your logo, then two T’s?”

“Perfect, isn’t it?” Mikey smiled, “thanks for the help Seb!” Mikey said as he ran off to train with the others, Seb looked at the open door, before getting up with a sigh and closing it.

Seb liked to spend time with Mikey, cause Mikey appreciated his art and would always ask Seb to draw him fanart or something along those lines. Mikey was also the one to introduce him to movies and comic books.

Seb heard some laughter after a while, so Seb went to look and saw Mikey leave with an angry expression.

“What happened?” Seb jumped off.

“Mikey wanted to be a superhero, can you believe it?” Raph said.

“Aren’t you guys already kind of superheroes?” Seb looked at Raph.

“Technically we are vigilantes,” Donnie answered.

“Were you rude to Mikey?” Seb looked at Leo, who avoided eye contact, “You were.”

There was a moment of silence, before Seb heard many sighs.

Seb had no energy to deal with his brother's behavior, so he decided to turn on the TV’s and watch the news. While his brothers kept on training.

Soon enough Mikey returned, but he was acting odd. Tired, Seb hasn't seen Mikey this tired for a long time.

Mikey headed for the TV and sat down next to Seb and leaned on him. They watched the Silver Century talk about Mikey’s herosona. Seb watched Mikey stand up and say.

“I’m a turtle, not a titan. So who’s ready to get back to training?”

Seb was baffled by this. His gaze going back and fort between Mikey and the TV. Seb was suprised, but happy for Mikey.

Later that night, Seb found Mikey laying on the floor.

“You good there, M?”

“Hero work is tiring.”

“I see. Do you want me to lay with you? I can bring the blanket.”

“Yes, please.”

For the rest of the day Mikey and Seb watched horror movies, much to Splinter's dismay.

Chapter Text

Seb doesn’t know how he got into horror movies, but it was definitely Mikey’s fault. Since he is the only other family member who watches horror movies.

Today, Mikey just went to pick up Seb from his room to watch one of the classic horror movies. Because he wanted company, and Seb was the best choice. They have watched the movie for a good while now, the movie was in its climax.

“There are some things man was never supposed to tamper with,” Mikey and the professor said in unison as the movie got into its climax. Then it changed to the ads, which indicated that the movie was over.

“A classic,” Seb leaned on Mikey, while looking at TV.

“Definitely, we should do these horror movie marathons more often,” Mikey said.

“Agree, but I still think Jaws was the best one,” Seb said, with confidence.

“No way! Friday the thirteenth! Hello. The cult classic!” Mikey shook Seb back and forth.

They kept talking about the plot of the movie and which characters were their favorites, while Donnie was right next to them inspecting the crystals.

“The police should have killed the monster with his car, not gotten out of his car and tried to shoot it,” Seb said.

“Yeah, that was dumb,” Mikey agreed in defeat, but then his focus quickly moved to Donnie. “Hey Don, what’s you doing?”

“I’m checking out these crystals we found when we moved in here. Trying to classify them, but I can’t find anything like them in the books,” Donnie looked up at Mikey,” the microscopic crystal structures are linked almost like mutated brain cells.”

“That’s cursed,” Seb had gotten out of the pillow pile and made his way next to Donnie. Seb took one of the crystals to inspect.

“Yep, like a horror movie plot,” Mikey grinned at Donnie taking the other crystal.

Mikey and Seb kept looking at the crystal for a moment, before looking at each other. A thought passed through both of their minds.

“Do you want to do a cool pose?” Seb asked.

“I thought you would never ask,” Mikey replied.

Donnie looked on as his younger brothers, who were doing multiple action poses. It was dumb, but Donnie wasn’t going to ruin their fun. There were already many more crystals laying around their lair. What he didn’t expect to happen when the crystals touched to release a glass shattering sound that woke up everyone in the lair.

Mikey and Seb were frozen and looking at each other, not knowing what to do. Donnie quickly and efficiently put the crystals on top of the table and separated the crystals, which made the sound stop. There was a moment of silence, that was broken by the intruder alarm.

When they turned on the cameras they saw a new entity, something that wasn’t human or robotic. The thing seemed to be looking around for something. Leo and Raph came running to them the moment they heard the intruder alarm. Both of them were ready to fight.

“What the shell is going on?!” Raph shouted.

“Nothing yet. Except that,” Seb said pointing at the screen where the thing still was.

Raph looked baffled before quickly changing his focus on Don, “Donnie, what is that thing?”

“I don’t know, but we need to figure this out,” Donnie said, as he got his stuff.

“Whatever it is, we need to be careful,” Leo said, before turning to look at Seb, “Tell father, where we are going.”

With that Seb’s older brothers went to look what happened, while Seb went off to talk to Master Spinter and waited for them to return.

After what felt like a few minutes, the brothers were back. Seb couldn’t even greet them, when Donnie went straight to his lab to examine the rocks he collected.

“So? What happened?” Seb asked, getting closer to Leo, Raph and Mikey.

“The horror movies are real, Seb. There is a monster that destroyed walls,” Mikey shook Seb’s shoulder, “We are going to die.”

“We’re not going to die, shell for brains,” Raph hit Mikey’s head, who winced.

“But we need to figure this out, before it becomes a larger problem,” Leo said and just as he said it, Donnie reappeared.

“We may have bigger problems now, the creature melted right through the stone. Being able to liquefy stone is the perfect ability for a subterranean life form,” Donnie said from his lab.

“Looks like we are going to explore. All in favor say Aye,” Leo said.

“Aye!” Leo, Raph and Donnie looked at Mikey, who only gave a “eep.”

“Close enough,” Leo said.

Mikey quickly turned around and hugged Seb for his dear life. While Seb was planning what he was going to eat for lunch.

“Seb, you gotta save me!” Mikey hugged Seb, who was now lifted off the floor.

“None of that Mikey, we are going.” Raph took Mikey with him.

“Avenge me, Seb! Avenge me!” Mikey shouted as he was being taken away.

“Have fun!” Seb smiled apologetically. He watched his brother get ready for their adventure. Mikey tried to get out one more time when they were leaving, but Raph caught him again.

“Bye, guys!” Seb waved his brothers off. Looking at smiling Splinter who was also with him waving his sons off. They watched as the brothers used Donnie’s new creation to drill. They continued to wave until they couldn’t see it anymore.

Splinter turned to look at Seb, he still had his grin when he said, “It's time for your training, my son.”

“Yes, dad,” Seb slouched forward, he had a feeling that he wasn’t getting off easy.

It has been a few days since Seb’s brothers left for the mines. Everything had been pretty normal, but a lot more boring in Seb’s opinion. He didn’t have anything to do and it was way too quiet.

It had been a normal day when Master Splinter noticed foot ninjas in their sewers. At first it was a couple of ninja, but it soon changed into patilions of foot ninjas. Master Splinter understandably saw this as a huge problem.

“There is another one, there dad,” Seb said pointing at the screen, showing a foot ninja.

Splinter’s ears were twitching in worry as he looked at the cameras. Something had changed, but he wasn’t sure what.

Splinter was growing worried for their safety each time the cameras showed a foot ninja. They were closing towards their lair. Splinter decided that he would wait for his sons, but he didn’t want Sebastiano to be in danger.

So he took him to April’s, who gladly took Seb in. Seb had protested this, but when Splinter said that he wasn’t going to be gone for long, Seb calmed down. It has been at least a day since Seb has last seen Splinter.

“I hope they're okay,” April said worriedly.

“They will be fine,” Seb said as though he was trying to convince himself.

The two of them could only wait for the others to arrive.

---------------------

April has liked Seb from the moment she and Seb talked. She found him endearing and sweet, she could never understand why Casey didn’t like Seb. He is a sweet kid, he could do no wrong. He’s so helpful and polite.

April has noticed a lot of interesting things about Seb. Compared to his brothers, Seb needed physical contact to feel safe, she doesn’t understand why, but she has noticed that Seb tends to grab or lean against his brothers a lot. He also expressed his appreciation through touch. So when Seb asked if he could hold April’s hand, she couldn’t say no.

It's been more than a day since they saw Splinter and Seb is growing noticeably anxious. It probably has to do with the fact that he is not at home and the lack of hiding places in her house.

There had been a couple of close calls, when one of her friends came to check on her and Seb had to jump out of the window to not be seen. They have both learned their lesson. April won’t answer the door until Seb has hidden and Seb will immediately hide when he hears anything.

When they heard the door knock, Seb hid himself quickly into the shadows, while April went to open the door.

“Hey April!” Mikey said smiling. April saw Seb appear right next to her in a second, launching himself at Mikey.

“You’re back!” Seb was smiling, as he clung to Mikey, “How did it go, did you find anything interesting?”

“A lot has happened,” Donnie had a sober look on his face. Seb looked from Mikey to Donnie with confusion.

“I’ll tell you later,” Donnie walked past Seb, giving him a small pat on the way, “promise.”

Leo and Raph followed closely behind them with Splinter. During this whole time Seb had refused to get off Mikey, until Mikey placed him on Raph’s back, to which Seb started to lay on top of Raph. Seb lifted his head to look at Leo who smiled at Seb.

The whole scene was endearing.

But there was something in the back of her head that kept telling her something was wrong. April couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen.

Chapter Text

They’ve been living in April’s home for about three days at this point. No one was happy with the situation, but it was either living with April for a while or endangering their home.

Everyone was tense, especially Raph who was arguing about their next move with Leo. Leo wanted to stay and look at what the foot ninja wanted, while Raph wanted to beat up some foot ninjas.

Seb sat between Mikey and Donnie eating chips with them as he watched the drama going on. All things considered, it felt nice to hear his brothers arguing, it brought a sense of home and familiarity in this uncertain situation.

It didn’t completely stop Seb from worrying about what was happening, but he felt a lot more at ease. As the argument kept going, Seb started to zone out while he was leaning on Donnie. Donnie noticed this and moved a little, so that Seb would have an easier time leaning against him.

Seb didn’t know how long he was zoned out, but when he heard the doorbell ring. He quickly moved to the kitchen to hide.

“Oh no, who could that be? You guys can’t be seen. you’d better all-” April turned around to see nothing. She was impressed. Then she opened the door and there stood a delivery boy with takeout.

Seb had hid behind the kitchen counter and jumped back to the main room when the delivery boy left. He went to get his and Leo’s food as Raph walked to go to the showers. Mikey and Donnie were already eating, while April and Splinter looked at each other with understanding.

Seb sat next to Leo and gave him his food, they ate in comfortable silence. Mikey was teasing Raph and Donnie looked done with everything.

“When do you think we will go back home?” Seb leaned against Leo.

“I don’t know, Seb,” Leo said. “Things are getting more complicated.”

Seb looked at Leo, whose face showed tormented. Seb didn’t say anything, just moved closer to Leo to comfort him. They stayed like that for the rest of the dinner. Still, Leo being Leo, he wanted to go training, so he gave Seb a smile as Leo left to train.

Now that Leo was gone, Seb had nothing to do, except watch Donnie create something cool. He didn’t know what it was, but it looked useful. It was always magical for Seb to see his older brother build something. Seb still has no idea how Donnie made the hover bikes, but he’s not complaining.

A few moments later, Raph came out of the shower screaming, because the water was cold. He then went to Donnie, demanding him to fix the water heater. Donnie was reluctant, but no one other than him could fix it.

“Can I come?” Seb asked.

Donnie was about to say no, but he realized that if Seb learned to fix the heater, he wouldn’t need to do it all the time. Donnie nodded and Seb followed excitedly behind him.

As they made their way through the stairs to the hallway. Both of them saw a creature of nightmares. Sure it was very tiny, but it was also really ugly. Before either of them could take a closer look, it disappeared into thin air.

Seb was about to think he was hallucinating, when he saw another creature. This time Donnie wasn’t about to let this slide.

They followed the thing to a room, where they saw a man drawing. Seb remembered that April mentioned renting the downstair’s room for some guy. Seb doubts that she said anything about the guy having powers or something like that.

Donnie took a careful step into the room, while signaling to Seb to stay behind him.

“Hello?” Donnie started, startling the man who quickly begged them not to take him. Seb had to take a double take on what that man said.

“We’re not taking you anywhere,” Donnie said, trying to calm the situation.

The guy's name is Kirby and he seems nice. Kirby has a crystal that can make anything real. It apparently works best if it is stuck to a pen. Kirby was currently showing Donnie how the crystal was able to make his drawing real. Seb couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Not like bad wrong, but weird wrong.

Seb looked around the room, it was how he imagined a comic artist’s room to be like. Messy, but he could tell there were intentions where the things were placed. Seb's eyes wandered around the room until they landed on the clock.

It’s getting pretty late.

They should fix the heater.

“Hey, Donnie, we should fix the heater before Raph gets here,” Seb taps Donnie on his shell.

“Oh yeah we should do that, give us a minute Kirby, we’ll be right back,” Donnie says. They went to the room where the water heater is, there was one pipe that needed to be fixed. Seb followed Donnie’s instructions and managed to twist the pipe back to its original position.

Seb went to tell Raph that the heater was fixed, before returning back to Kirby’s room, where Donnie was still talking to Kirby. When Seb entered the room, Kirby smiled at him and handed Seb a piece of paper.

“Don here, mentioned that you like to draw, so do you want to try,” Kirby offered the pen to Seb, who took it.

“So I can draw anything and it will turn to life?” Seb asked with excitement. He could finally show off his drawing skills.

“Exactly. Let your imagination run wild and draw what you want,” Kirby encouraged.

Seb took a moment to think about it, before deciding to draw a dragon. They are simply too cool, not to make them real for a moment.

Seb began drawing the dragon, starting with its head. While Seb kept drawing, Kirby and Donnie started talking about the possibility of the multiverse.

When Seb finished drawing the dragon, he felt an unusually large amount of pride. The dragon is more snake-like, it has legs and arms, Seb thinks it’s sad if it can’t walk. He also created horns that resembled antlers for it, simply because he can.

Then he had to wait for it to come alive. From what Kirby told him, the drawing should crawl its way off the page, like how Donnie’s stickfigure did. Seb wasn’t expecting it to take a minute, before the Dragon bursted in green nordic lights through the page. This was unusual, the art should rise calmly, not catapult itself out.

The dragon circled around them, it was definitely curious. It was also pretty small, almost like a baby. To everyone’s relief the dragon wasn’t hostile at any of them.

Donnie was amazed at that and petted the dragon who came near him. The dragon didn’t resist and allowed Donnie to examine it, but it kept its eyes on Seb. Kirby was surprised and impressed.

“I haven’t seen that before,” Kirby was amazed.

The dragon slowly faded away, but got close enough to Seb to nudge him. Seb thought it was cute, he reached out to pet it. To Seb’s surprise it was soft. Then it disappeared completely.

“Wow. . It’s sad that all of them have to disappear, right Kirby?” Donnie asked, turning to look at Kirby.

“Well, most of them do disappear, except this one,” Kirby showed the portal machine.

Donnie was intrigued, he went close to the portal and put his head inside it. Seb and Kirby were both shocked. Seb quickly took a hold of Donnie’s shell and pulled him out of the portal. When Donnie popped his head back to the real world, had literal stars in his eyes.

“You guys need to see this!” Donnie smiled, “it’s amazing,” Then he went in.

Kirby and Seb looked at each other again and shrugged.

However, Seb noticed that Kirby looked conflicted, before he took his notebook with him and looked at his room, like it was the last time he would see it. Something clicked in Seb’s head. After all those scary movies and the urban legends Splinter used to tell him. It made sense.

“You’re not from here, right?” Seb asked.

“You're right, I’m not from here,” Kirby said.

“How long will you be here?”

“Not for long.”

“That’s suspicious as shell,” Seb said, side eyeing Kirby, who let out a laugh.

“I guess, but we need to catch up to your brother,” Kirby said, to which Seb nodded.

Then they went inside the portal following Donnie’s lead.

The place was odd to stay the least. Seb and Kirby were amazed by the place. The sky was purple and it looked more sci-fi, Seb would know that, thanks to Mikey’s movie marathons. But that amazement disappeared as soon as the monsters came.

“Seb! Stay here and protect Kirby!” Donnie went to fight with the heroes, while Seb and Kirby watched from the sidelines. Seb frantically looked for his dragon, but was disappointed that it was nowhere to be found, it would have been nice to have some more back up. But he also couldn’t find Donnie’s stickman figure, so they must be somewhere else. To protect themselves Kirby made a robot for him and Seb.

As they watched the fighting intensify, Seb noticed Kirby’s book move, which gave him an idea.

“Can’t you influence this world by drawing on top of the character or something,” Seb looked at Kirby, who had the same realization.

“You're right,” Kirby started aggressively drawing and erasing in the notebook. Seb on the other hand threw his kunais at the monster that was getting too close to Donnie. With the three of them and an army of fictional heroes. The monsters were quickly subdued.

Kirby and Donnie were celebrated as Heroes by the local people. While Seb tried to stay away from the attention. It didn’t feel right to be seen. The celebration was cut short, when they noticed the portal light starting to dim.

After saying their goodbyes they made their way toward the portal, but when they got close to it, it started to shrink.

Before Seb could say anything, he felt Donnie pick him up and throw him into the portal. He was then quickly followed by Donnie, but before Kirby could enter the portal was already too small for him to enter.

“Thank you two, this has been an amazing experience,” Kirby said, before the portal fully closed. Donnie was devastated by this. Seb scooted over and hugged Donnie. Neither of them said anything.

Seb noticed he had a paper addressed to Don. He picked it up and showed it to Donnie.

“Don, this is for you,” Seb gave the paper to Donnie, who scanned. Seb couldn’t see what it said. Donnie was silent for a couple of minutes, before he gave a bittersweet smile.

“I think it’s time to head back,” Donnie said, avoiding Seb’s eyes.

“Do you think the guys would believe us?” Seb asked, looking at Donnie.

“Not a chance. . .” Donnie didn’t have his usual charm as he said it.

Seb took Donnie’s hand as they walked back to the apartment. Where Donnie went to the window and kept looking out to the night sky. Seb stayed close to him. Not leaving his side, until he was sure Donnie was okay.

Chapter Text

In Seb's own opinion Raph is the most comfortable one to sleep on top of. He doesn’t move and Seb has theorized that Raph has a sixth sense for danger. Danger this time being Seb falling off Raph.

Seb didn’t even bother waking up, when he felt Raph readjust Seb back to his shell. But what did wake him up was the weird sound that was coming near the window. Seb cracked open his eyes to see Leo leaving to train and talking with Splinter. Which was pretty normal, all things considered. He has been doing that a lot, so Seb didn’t think about it too much.

Seb fell back to sleep, the last thing he saw was Leo jumping out of the window.

A few hours later he was startled awake by Mikey screaming, Raph and Donnie jumped straight to action. Seb would have hit the floor, if Raph didn’t catch Seb, again.

Seb was being held by Raph as Mikey explained how he accidentally hit himself. Donnie looked so done with this whole situation. Raph glanced at Seb who still looked tired, so Raph decided to kill two birds with one stone and placed Seb on top of Mikey, so he couldn’t do anything more stupid.

“Sup, Mikey. . .” Seb said as he went to sleep.

“Hi, Sebbie. .” Mikey said, also falling asleep.

Seb continued to sleep for an hour until Mikey wanted to make breakfast.

Mikey has made a habit of cooking when living with April, that habit includes Seb, so he isn’t getting anymore sleep. Apparently, having Seb around stops the food from being burnt, so Mikey succeeds more with cooking, when Seb is around.

“Can you also make bacons, too?” Seb asked.

“Sure, bud,” Mikey smiled, as he was getting bacons from the fridge.

Seb continued to watch Mikey cook for a while, however when he smelled the bread was ready, he changed his focus to that. Seb took the bread out of the toaster before it could burn them and set the house on fire. He then arranged the plates and cups carefully, before putting the toast and fruits on the table.

“Mikey, I think the eggs are almost done,” Seb smelt the air.

“Thanks Seb!” Mikey turned the shove off.

When the breakfast was finished, April sighed in relief because nothing was burnt, broken or destroyed. She gave Seb a pat on the head, before sitting down. Seb just looked at her with confusion.

Soon everyone else joined in. It wasn’t anything special, but at least everyone was having a good time. Mikey was making jokes, April was thankful her kitchen wasn’t trashed, Raph and Donnie were talking about the news and Master Splinter was drinking his tea.

As they ate, Mikey noticed that Leo was still missing. No one was especially worried, because Leo wouldn’t cause any problems and out of all of them, he was the responsible one.

But something felt different. Seb could feel it and he didn’t like it at all. Despite the circumstances, he decided to brush it off, since everyone else wasn’t worried about Leo. Neither should he.

.

.

.

Time went by with no sight of Leo, everyone was becoming more worried about him. Even Casey hasn’t seen Leo, while he was patrolling.

Seb kept looking out from the window for Leo. Sure it has only been 2 hours, but for Leo it was a long time. Raph had been walking in circles, while Mikey and Donnie kept glancing at the clock. Splinter was meditating, but they could tell Splinter was also worried.

“Is Leo always this late?” April asked.

“No. . Something ain’t right here,” Raph walked towards the door, he was quickly followed by Mikey and Raph.

As they were moving to leave, they heard a sound of glass shattering right behind them, and when they turned to look they saw Leo get thrown through the window.

“Leo!”

Seb stood shocked as his older brothers and father quickly went to Leo. Seb didn’t know what to do, should he get the bandage or call someone. Seb’s eyes looked over Leo. There was so much blood, Seb got a glimpse at Leo’s shell and that snapped him out of his shock. He quickly moved next to Leo and helped to move him to his side, while Donnie started to remove the glass.

“Who did this to you?” Raph asked, while holding one of Leo’s arms.

Raph was enraged and he looked like he was ready to kill anyone. Mikey was quiet, his eyes were wide, but he was determinate. Don didn’t allow himself to feel, he needed to focus on Leo.

Leo slowly opened his eyes, to see his family surrounding him. They were talking about what to do next. Leo tightened his hold on Raph’s hand, making Raph look at him.

“He’s back. . “The Shredder”. He’s back,” Leo whispered, through the pain.

The room fell into a shocked silence.

Everyone had thought that Master Splinter had killed Shredder by dropping a rooftop tank on top of him, but apparently that wasn’t enough.

They didn’t have long to process that information when the foot ninja were coming into the house and were destroying everything. Without any words everyone in the room knew that the best course of action for now was to leave and get away as far as possible.

“April! Sebastiano! Take Leo and get out of here, we will protect you,” Master Splinter ordered, while signing Don, Raph and Mikey to fight.

April and Seb went to lift Leo up as they were trying to leave. Leo was grunting from pain, but he was still conscious enough to talk.

“Just stay awake, we’ll get you out of here,” Seb said, trying to calm down his nerves.

“Leave me, I would only slow you down,” Leo answered. Seb's eyes widened as he looked at Leo. His older brother who wouldn’t leave anyone behind, telling him to leave him. April snapped before Seb could.

“Never in a million years! Leo! I could and will never run out on you! We will get you out and that’s final!” April said.

Leo was opening his mouth to argue, but was stopped by Seb.

“Don’t you dare say anything against it. You don’t have a choice now,” Seb said.

Leo stayed silent for the time being, April made Leo lean on her, so they could get to the front door that leads to the antique store faster. When April opened the door, there were foot ninjas waiting for them. Seb let go of Leo, took his yari and knocked out the first ninja using the blunt end. He trusts that April will hold Leo.

“Mikey, a little help!” Seb shouted to which Mikey came in an instant to beat some foot ninjas. Others soon followed, Seb stayed behind April, knocking anyone out who tried to come towards them.

When they were at the staircase, Mikey dropped down to the first level to check the situation in the antique store. Mikey opened the door and closed it, he then turned to alert others about the mean looking guys, who were actually Shredder's elite guards. They didn’t have time to waste so Donnie, Mikey, Raph and Splinter went to fight the elite guards.

April and Seb had managed to get Leo downstairs, it had taken a while. They didn’t want Leo’s injuries to get any worse than they already were. They were almost at the door when someone grabbed Leo by his shell and held him in the air. The blond man is very big, he has a dragon tattoo and Seb is pretty sure he has heard about this man. Hun was about to mock April, until he saw Seb and his expression changed to an intrigued one.

“Oh, there are more of you freaks?” Hun said, grinning.

“Let go of my brother or else! You punk!” Seb shouted, aiming his su-yari at Hun.

“Or what? You're just a child-” Hun leaned down, while moving his su-yari to the side with his free hand. Master Splinter has always taught Seb not to underestimate his opponent and now it was time for Hun to learn it. Seb saw an opportunity when Hun leaned down to look at him. Hun didn’t pay attention to what else Seb was doing, he didn’t see Seb take out his kunai and angled it.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAHHHHH” Hun screamed, dropping Leo in the process and covering his right eye. Seb used the blunt end of his yari to push Hun further away, while April took Leo and made a beeline for the shop.

Seb looked down at Hun without any remorse “Or I’ll take your eye,” Leaving Hun with one less eye than before, closing the door, and April locked it the moment Seb was out.

But the danger was not even anywhere near over. April went to Splinter with Leo close to her, while Seb stayed farther away from the fights. As Seb was watching things unfold, he realized that this was the first time he had been in a real fight. Seb didn’t like it. He had been told that it was dangerous, but fun and rewarding. This was anything else but that. This was a life and death, but they could still make it. Seb watched as his family fought, he should also do something. Seb was about to take a step towards one of the elite guards, but he stopped when they disappeared.

Then Shredder appeared, in his full armor glory.

Seb was terrified, he had heard of Shredder or Oroku Saki, but being actually near him was a whole different thing.

“You freaks have been a thorn in my side for long enough,” Shredder was focusing on his older brothers taunting them. He was making his way towards them.

But he stopped abruptly when he made eye contact with Seb. Taking notice of Seb’s presence for the first time. Something shifted in his gaze, for a second it looked like he was confused, but it was soon replaced with a twisted form of delight.

Shredder straightened his stance and had his full focus on Seb. Seb’s family noticed this and quickly tried to get to Seb, but were stopped by the elite guards, who had reappeared after Shredder had raised his hand.

Leaving only Sebastiano and Shredder as the only ones.

“I wasn’t aware there were more of you,” Shredder took a step closer, Seb backed away. Shredder was oddly disappointed by that. But Seb didn’t care, he wanted to get as far away as possible. Seb tried to assess the situation and find a way to leave, but he couldn’t find anything. There was nowhere to run. Even if he tried, the foot elite would get to him in seconds. He has to face Shredder.

“They hid you pretty well from me. . . From the looks of it, you're just a mere child,” Shredder’s voice sounded excited. He unleashed his steel claws, Seb could see his reflection from those claws, “I wonder. How much pain killing you would inflict on them.”

Seb stayed silent, fearing his voice would break, he didn’t want to seem any more weak than he already was.

“Don’t you dare, lay a finger on him, or I swear to god I will have your head,” Raph shouted over the fighting.

“Yeah! We’ll beat you six feet under!” Mikey shouted, using his nunchuck to distract the enemy.

“Get your claws away from my brother!” Donnie kicked the elite ninja through the window.

Shredder was not listening to anything around him, only closing in on Seb. Seb could see from the corner of his eye, how Splinter was desperately trying to get to Seb.

“I will not let you hurt my son, Shredder!” Splinter shouted, but his voice was drowned by the fighting.

“You would look good as a decoration.”

That made Seb's skin crawl, there was no exaggeration in his tone. He was going to do it. Seb didn’t like the situation at all. But he wasn't going down without a figh, so he prepared his yari.

“Oh, you wield the su-yari, quite an interesting choice, little turtle,” Shredder said.

They were now close enough to each other to battle.

From what Seb has head, there was no way he would win this on his own.

Seb didn’t want to die.

But there is no one that can save him.

Shredder struck first aiming for Seb’s neck, Seb dodged by moving to the right side. Seb aimed his yari’s knife towards Shredder's chest, but Shredder grabbed it. Now looking right at Seb’s eyes with his smiling eyes. He kicked Seb to the wall, the impact leaving a mark on the wall.

Shredder looks at the yari in his hands and throws it back to Seb.

“Get up,” he said, “I want to kill you after you have given your all. Child.”

Seb took his yari and got back into his fighting stand.

The fight continues as Seb avoids Shredder’s moves by keeping a distance. But it is not enough. As Seb was trying to avoid Shredder’s claws, Shredder managed to grab his left hand, which was holding his yari. Shredder strikes without any hesitation aiming the claws at Seb’s head. Seb can’t move and his weapon hand is held in place. He instinctively moves his free hand to cover his face.

The claws make contact with Seb’s right hand. Instead of pushing the claws into Seb’s arm, Shredder instead slides it downward, leaving huge wounds behind. Seb bites his tongue to keep from screaming. It’s barely working.

Shredder looks pleased with himself as he watches the blood flow out of Seb’s arm. He lets go of the weapon arm and takes the now bleeding hand. In that moment Seb sees an opening and strikes at Shredder's chest plate, but it doesn’t go through.

Shredder laughs at Seb’s face. The little turtle child is confused.

“You can’t do anything to me,” Shredder says as Seb tries to attack again with his yari but fails because of the pain in his arm. “Thank you for the entertainment, you were fun to play with.”

Seb looks at Shredder with anger. He hates and fears this man with his whole soul, but he needs to get out of his hold. Seb tries to use the position to his leverage and escape-

“Crack”

The sound of bone breaking is echoed throughout the room. The pain doesn’t register right away because of the adrenaline and the shock. Seb looks at his bleeding arm.

It’s positioned wrong.

Seb takes a breath. He needs to stay calm or Shredder will-

Then Seb feels it.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!” Seb screams, now trying to jank his arm away from the Shredder from instinct. It makes the pain so much worse, but Seb doesn’t want to, he can’t be close to this thing! But Shredder is not letting go, he is tightening his hold on Seb. Not caring that Seb’s blood stains his armor.

Splinter has a face of utter despair, as he tries to go to Seb, but can’t because the ninja block his path.

Raph is now more than angry, he is furious, fighting and knocking out anyone who comes near him as he tries to make his way to Seb.

Don’s face is completely expressionless, but the rage in his eye is something nothing can calm.

Mikey’s expression turns serious and his attack becomes more tactical and his eyes are unforgiving.

April has to cover her mouth from making any sounds as she listens to Seb scream. It is the most horrifying thing she has seen.

Leo watches with wrath and plans of murder in his mind. He would never forgive Shredder. But right now he is desperate to get to Seb.

Seb can feel his blood flowing down his arm. He doesn’t know what to do as Shredder raises his claws again.

“Good night, little turtle.”

Seb closes his eyes waiting for his end to come, but instead he hears the sound of glass shattering and an engine running.

“And that’s what I call crashing a party”

Casey Jones has come to the rescue, driving around like a mad man. Making Shredder let go of Seb’s hand as the motorcycle comes near them. Casey quickly takes Seb away from Shredder.

“Hey, kid. You good?” Casey looked down and saw Seb's bloodied arm. “Or not.”

“We have to retreat!” Donnie shouted, running next to Seb and starting to examine Seb’s broken hand.

The next few moments went flying past, Seb couldn't focus on his surroundings his hand was in excruciating pain. At some point Leo stood up protectively in front of Seb, when Shedder tried to come near him. Seb looked up to see his older brother.

“I won’t allow you to hurt my little brother, ever again,” Leo stared down at Shredder, who was still battling against Splinter, “I will protect my brothers with my life.”

“Guys go to the old cooler!” April shouted as he took Leo with her, as the others followed.

When they made it to the old cooler and closed the door. They all could finally take a moment to breathe. Seb leaned against the wall, the memories of what happened still fresh in his mind. Seb stayed quiet, while Donnie took out his arm and started to bandage and reposition it with a stick.

When Donnie was done, Raph sat next to Seb and brought Seb’s head to lean against his shoulder, while making sure to avoid squishing the injured arm.

Seb let out a quiet sob, making Raph Raph’s hold tighter. Splinter gently caressesing Seb’s face to make him feel calm. No one said anything about it, deciding that now it was not the time.

Minutes passed and they didn’t hear anything from the foot ninjas. But something else was happening.

“Is it just me, but is it getting hotter here?” Mikey looked at others worriedly.

“I smell gas,” Donnie said.

“Fire and Gas.. We need to leave now!” Casey shouted.

Mikey was instantly in front of the door pulling at the door. But it didn’t move, “It’s locked!”

The fire under the door was spreading rapidly and there seemed to be no way out.

“There is an air vent, right here,” April shouted, showing Mikey and Don it. Neither of them wasted any time and took it out. Everyone got out one by one.

They ran a few blocks away, before they heard a loud explosion from behind them. Raph was still holding on to Seb as they saw April's place explode. Donnie and Mikey were holding Leo, while Splinter was comforting April and apologizing.

"I'm sorry for your home, April. This is my fault for not being able to destoy Shredder"

“No, it’s not your fault. . ."

"We need a place to stay,” Donnie says.

“I can take you to my grandmother’s place,” Casey offered.

Chapter Text

They had to wait for a while before Casey and April returned with a truck. Meanwhile, Donnie changed Seb’s to a new one. Leo was falling to unconsciousness slowly, but surely. Mikey was patting Seb’s shell while Raph kept holding him.

When Casey and April finally returned, everyone got on.

During the drive, Leo started to lean on Seb’s good side, as if to make sure Seb was still there. After a while Leo fell completely unconscious and Splinter moved Leo to rest against him. Seb leaned on Raph once again.

The ride was quiet. No one wanted to acknowledge what had happened. It all happened so suddenly, that it all came crashing down on them.

There shouldn’t be any more danger, but they were all on high alert for anything that could harm them.

“Does your arm hurt, bud?” Mikey asks Seb, while covering Seb with blankets.

“If I try to move it, then yes, but not as bad as before. . I think,” Seb said, while trying to remember what happened. Which felt odd, it had happened about thirty minutes ago and yet he couldn’t recall it.

Seb opens and closes his palm, to see if he still has working nerves, like how donnie told him to do. It works. Seb feels little at ease to know that. He hears Donnie let out a relieved sigh.

Raph continues to stare at Seb’s bloodied arm.

“. . . I’m sorry,” Raph nudged Seb.

“It wasn’t your fault, why are you even apologizing for it?” Seb asked, now looking more surprised than before.

Mikey now looked at Seb with clear sadness in his eyes. “Seb, we are your older brothers, it is our job to keep you safe. Not bring danger to you.”

“You should have never needed to fight Shredder,” Donnie said quietly.

“My sons, what has happened in the past, has happened. We can’t change it, but we can learn from it and move forward,” Splinter said as he changed Leo’s position to laying down, “We now have to look to the future and prepare for change.”

“We did our best there, we can grieve for the things we lost when we are safe, for now. I am proud of you, my sons,” Splinter smiled at his sons. Raph, Donnie and Mikey seemed more at ease after Splinter said that.

“I blame Shredder for this,” Seb raises his bloodied hand, “never you guys and If I do, that thing is an imposter.”

Mikey laughs, Donnie looks done with this situation but happy, and Raph lets out an annoyed huff. This feels more normal.

“I would still trust you guys to protect me, even after this,” Seb says, smiling. He can quite literally hear his brother are on the verge of tears with Splinter and April. Casey is already crying.

With that Seb could feel himself getting tired. He gave a little yawn and drifted to sleep.

The rest of the ride was peaceful, if for the freezing cold weather and the fear of hyperthermia. They made it to the farm without anything interfering with them.

When Seb saw the building he thought it looked like something Casey would live in. The inside of the house was warm, but it looked abandoned.

Seb got to keep the blanket,he stayed near Leo, while watching everyone else work together. There was some space in the sofa, so that Seb could squeeze himself next to Leo. Leo would sometimes make sounds, but he wouldn’t wake up.

As the day was turning night and Leo had still not woken up. Everyone was growing worried, especially Raph. In a last ditch effort to make Leo wake up, they decided to tell their experience with Leo.

Seb watched as his brothers recounted their experience with Leo. How Leo had saved Donnie from drawing, how he was still when Mikey annoyed him and how he had saved Raph from the white alligator.

Leo moved a little after each story, looking like he could wake up soon, since he could probably hear them, Seb decided to tell his story.

“Hey Leo.. Do you remember the time when I got lost and you found me,” Seb started leaning on the sofa as he looked at Leo.

“I think I was trying to prove you guys wrong, but I failed spectacularly. I didn’t want you guys to think I was weak, because I wanted to be around you, so I thought maybe, if I could do things by myself,” Seb looked to the side, “I was scared and alone back then, there was nothing to comfort me, so I started to panic. But you found me and hugged me telling that everything was fine now. You calmed me down,” Seb turned his focus back to Leo.

“You were there to find me and bring me home, so let us bring you back home now, Leo,” Seb had taken Leo’s hand, it had twitched once again.

Then it was Splinter's turn to tell them about how Leo used to be terrified of heights, but put them aside to save Splinter. Leo woke up after Splinter’s story, smiling at everyone in the room.

“Hi guys,” Leo said, making everyone one in the room to celebrate. Raph, Mikey, Seb and Donnie quickly engulfed Leo in the hug, while Splinter shed a few tears.

As the others left the room to let Leo and Seb rest. But neither of them wanted to rest as now, though safe, everything was coming back to them.

“I’m sorry Seb,” Leo whispered.

“Please, don’t be,” Seb said.

“But I failed you and our brother, our father and our friends. I can’t just forgive myself for it,” Leo was now spiralling, Seb didn’t know what to do, except say,

“I love you,” Seb said looking at Leo, “I always will and this,” Shows his injured arm, “was never your fault. So please stop blaming yourself for everything that happened.” Seb was tearing up, “I don’t want to lose you.” Seb was now leaning against Leo who was silent. But he was also tearing up.

“I love you too, otooto,” Leo said.

--------------------------------------------------------

When the others returned they saw Seb on top of Leo sleeping peacefully, while Leo was also sleeping surprisingly.

“This is the cutest thing ever,” Mikey chirped, “I mean look at them.”

“They might get a cold,” Donnie put the blanket on top of them smiling.

“They are like pigeons,” Raph said fondly.

“I think they remind me more of a duck and a duckling,” Splinter said, “We shall also rest, as tomorrow we have a lot of work to do. Good night my sons.”

“Good night, Master splinter.”

Chapter Text

Leo has been distant and angry at himself lately. Seb didn’t know how to help him at all, but he knew that Leo didn’t want a reminder of what had happened.

It has been months since everything that happened at April’s place, Seb’s arm was already completely healed, at first it was painful to even move but now the only reminder was the scars on his arms.

He can also now finally remember what happened back at the story fully. He still gets scared thinking about it, but with the help of his family things are looking up.

Donnie was more thankful that Seb’s arm was not broken anymore, but he did have a sad look on his face when he looked at the scars. There are two lines that climb up from his wrist to his shoulder. Seb would lean on Don to show that he was okay.

Mikey thought his scars were cool. He doodled on them flowers or whatever he thought of, it made both of them smile cause now they had made a new meaning for those scars.

Raph would hold his arm gently as he watched Seb’s arm in anger. Raph did not like one bit that the scar was there, but he chose to see it as a sign of survival. Raph has been hugging Seb more in these past months.

Splinter was saddened to see his youngest son bear the scars of his enemy, but he also chose to see the scar as a symbol that his son could live through anything.

April was worried about Seb’s health for the most part and the scars didn’t help her to calm down, but as time went on those scars became a part of Seb. April didn’t see them as a sign of defeat, but as a sign of Seb.

Casey just thought the scars were badass and it makes Seb a MAN.

Those same scars are what makes Leo hate himself even more, Seb doesn’t want Leo to cause him anymore problems, but it is inevitable. Raph seems to be the only other one after Splinter to get Leo to open up about himself.

So when Leo once again went to the barn alone, Seb told Raph straight away. Raph was good at comforting Leo, as he had what Seb lacked, experience with Leo. Also Raph was softie for his family, even if he would never say this.

So he watched from the sidelines as Raph went to talk to Leo. Seb looked on as Raph made his way to the barn and closed the door behind him.

It felt infuriating that he couldn’t do anything about it, matter of factly he would probably make it even worse. Leo already blames himself for what happened, if he even tries to talk to Leo. He will just deflect and focus on him. He’s not that pitifully broken, he was trained to be a ninja after all!

Seb takes a deep breath, his thoughts are clouding his mind. He needs to go on a walk to clear his head.

Seb spent hours wandering around the area, the snow is now frozen so that he doesn't leave any sign of him. Seb sometimes climbs the trees to see if there is anything interesting. He doesn’t find anything noteworthy, only unhatched eggs. They're really vulnerable right now, one move and it would be over. Seb carefully climbs off the trees.

He keeps going deeper into the woods. Seb wonders if he could see a bear, Casey mentioned that there had been a couple of bear sightings recently. But to his disappointment the only thing he finds is a broken truck and a very muscular woman influencer scientist. She seems pleased with something, but Seb is not about to find out.

He makes his way back to the farmhouse. When Seb is near the front pouch he hears commotions inside. He slowly enters the room, trying to stay undetected in case it is someone he doesn’t know. But that wasn’t the case this time.

Seb saw Donnie and Mikey freezing their shells off, April trying to help while Casey laughs and Splinter scolds them both.

“What happened?” Seb asked.

“They walked into a trap, can you believe that?” Casey said, turning to face Seb.

“I’ll believe it,” Splinter said.

“Gosh damn it guys, did you seriously just walk into a trap?” Sed tilted his head.

“Yep,” Mikey said defeatedly.

“This is unbelievable,” Seb said, but helped his brothers to get warm by giving them more blankets. Seb listens to them talk about a crazy buff woman who almost froze them. She was very interested in monsters and had actually come to the farmhouse.

Seb noticed that Mikey was still freezing and decided to make some hot chocolate for him. Seb went to the kitchen and while he was making the hot chocolate out of the corners of his eye, he saw a fox digging for food.

Seb quickly decided that he was going to give that fox some food, but first he would need to take care of his brothers. He took two cups of hot chocolate and made his way back to the living room.

When he returned, Casey, Mikey and Donnie were dressed as green men. Seb stood near the entrance. Too baffled to say anything for a split second before he started laughing hysterically.

Mikey and Donnie didn’t even bat an eye on Seb, taking their hot chocolates, while Seb kept laughing and not dropping a single drop. Casey kept murmuring curses under his breath as April tried to be supportive but was also trying to hide her laughter.

“Yeah, yeah laugh all you want. But this look is going to save us all,” Casey said as he was leaving with Mikey and Donnie.

“I believe you,” April said, making Casey blush. But before he could say anything, Mikey dragged him off.

Seb watched as the three of them left through the window. Seb also noticed the fox footprint in the snow. Seb quickly took a snack box from the kitchen counter and left through the back door.

He follows the trail of fox footprints deeper into the forest, but at some point they disappear into a hole. Seb feels disappointed, he really wanted to pet the fox.

Seb keeps wandering around the area with a box full of snacks, were they healthy for animals? Seb doesn’t know that, but he knows feeding them gets him friendship points.

Seb makes his way back to the farmhouse, but on the way he notices a bush moving.

Seb stops in his tracks and takes out a kunai pointing it towards the bush. He expects an animal to come out of the bush, but what he didn’t expect was for a small green bear-like creature to come out.

They stare down at one another, it’s intense.

But the bush isn’t attacking him, rather it seems more interested in the snacks.

Seb throws the bush a couple of snacks.The thing happily eats them before leaving. Is Seb crazy for feeding a bush? He should be, but this probably isn’t that crazy in the grand scheme of things.

A couple of minutes later two more bushes came. One small one and a big one. Seb gives them snacks too, soon enough every snack was eaten and there was nothing left. The bush family seemed pleased, and gave Seb a grateful growl.

They are bush bears, in Seb’s own words, they may have an actual name, but he couldn’t care right now. He waved at the bear bush family and returned to his home.

When he finally got back, he was greeted with Mikey destroying a cassette tape, Donnie talking about a scientific discovery, Splinter and April drinking tea like nothing bad had happened, while Casey was freezing and still in that dumb costume.

“I assume it went well?” Seb asked, taking a seat next to Splinter.

“Yes, they have succeeded, my son,” Splinter said.

The barn doors opened revealing a grinning Raph.

“Guys! I would like to introduce the new LEO!” Raph said as Leo walked out of the barn with his swords and looked happier than ever. He was quickly pulled to a group hug.

“Let’s go give Shredder a little surprise party!” Leo said, pulling away from the hug. Seb was smiling the whole time, they were going back to New York and were going to beat Shredder’s ass. Seb felt someone place a hand on his right shoulder, he looked up to see Leo. He is looking at Seb with an apologetic look, Seb in turn just smiles at Leo, telling him that it’s okay.

Chapter Text

The revenge plan was set to action right away, the turtle family, April and Casey made it to the turtle’s home, so that they could get everything ready. They made sure there wasn’t anyone in the sewers. As they expected, Shredder had thought they were really dead. There were no foot ninjas anywhere.

The lair was untouched when they entered it; everything was in place and nothing was stolen. Seb made sure Mr. Tortoise was in place and he was looking at the void as he always does. Seb made sure everything was in place, before he heard Raph scream, Seb saw Raph on the sofa holding an armor hand.

“You good there, Raphie?” Seb shouted.

“Fine as ever!” Raph said back, giving the hand to Leo.

Everyone was readying themselves for the battle. Seb was excited to join his family, but it slowly dawned on him that no one was telling him the revenge plan.

“You’re leaving me here?” Seb asked, getting closer to Leo. The others turned around to look at him guiltily. Splinter took a step forward and placed his hand on Seb’s shoulder.

“Sebastiano, you are not joining this mission. You have no reason to be there with us,” Splinter pupils widened, “You had nothing to do with Shredder and I like to keep you safe from him, this is the best course of action.”

“I have reason to be there, he attacked my family, he destroyed April’s property and he drove us out of our home,” Seb argued

“You are still young, bringing you there is a big risk, we are not willing to take,” Splinter hugged his youngest son. “You have a lot of potential that needs to grow.”

“But dad-”

“No, you are staying here and that's final,” Splinter looked at Seb and said quietly only for Sebastiano to hear, “This might be a suicide mission for us, but we must Stop Shredder now. Sebastiano, if worse comes to I want you to live on for us.”

Seb was quiet for a second, then he hugged his dad back and said quietly, “I don’t want to live without you guys.”

“That is not for us to decide, my son,” Splinter petted Seb, who was tearing up.

“Come on buddy, we will be back in a few hours, so don’t worry about us,” Mikey came to join the hug.

“Mikester’s right, we promise that we will be back as soon as possible,” Raph pat Seb’s shell.

“You do not need to look that sad, come on Seb you know us, we will always come back,” Donnie placed his hand on Seb’s shoulder. At this point Master Splinter has given his place to Leonardo who cupped Seb’s face.

“I promise to you that we will be back, Seb,” Leonardo smiled fondly.

Seb nodded and hugged his brother’s back. He watched from the side as his brother put their plan to action. April gave Seb a little pat as she got ready for her part of the plan.

Seb and Casey both watched as April was in full focus that screamed any distraction will cause you your life. Casey looked awkwardly at the kid who was worried about his family.

---------------------------------------

Casey Jones could handle a lot of things, but comforting a kid who you hated with the bottom of your heart is something that he probably shouldn’t handle.

“So do you want to fight?” Casey tried to cheer up Seb.

“Yeah, I’d like a distraction for now,” Seb got up.

Now Casey had to admit for an eleven year old, Seb is a good fighter. He knows what he does and is pretty merciless with it.

His perception of Seb has changed quite a lot in the past three months, when he saw Seb fighting the armor man alone and bleeding. He knew that the kid was badass. But then he saw how happy the kid was with his family.

Seb was also getting used to him, he wasn’t mean to him too much and during those months, Seb had even started to lean on him. When Mikey told him how Seb only leaned on people he trusted, Casey had felt a deep sense of honor at that.

Seb has also been sending messages to Angel, they often exchanged letters to each other. They mostly talked about art techniques and clothes, but sometimes they would talk about Angels schoolmates. Apparently thanks to Seb and him, Angel has been able to make more friends. Seb and Angel have also been planning on meeting up again. Casey was also invited, because Angel’s grandma asked him to look out for Angel.

They may not like each other, but at least they trusted and respected one another.

The fight was soon over and now they were once again looking at April as she worked on the computer. But Casey was getting bored, so he started to explain to Seb his feelings in April. Seb was not amused to the slightest, but listened because he needed to do something.

“I don’t know about it, but April just makes me feel something deep inside me. She is intelligent and she can kick my ass. Have I mentioned to you how hot she is when she is angry? Gosh dam.”

Seb was looking like he was dying inside, but Casey didn’t notice that.

“Maybe you love her? I mean you know you like her, just upgrade it to love,” Seb finally said.

Casey looked at Seb as if he was crazy, but then his eyes went to the void.

-------------------------------------

When Seb heard April scream that they succeeded. She came to hug both him and Casey. Seb was beyond relief when he heard that his brothers and father succeeded, he couldn’t wait to meet them again.

It didn’t take long for his family to return. Seb tackled the closest one to him, which was Mikey who laughed as he fell.

“Oh jeez, were you that worried, come on Seb we are fine,” Mikey hugged back. But everyone around them was silent. Seb raised his head to look around, he saw Donnie, Leo and Raph. But there was no sign of Splinter. Seb kept looking, but he just couldn’t find Splinter.

“Where is dad?” Seb turned to look at Mikey with a desperate look.

“We don’t know, he just disappeared from his spot after the whole fiasco was over,” Raph said and put a hand on Leo’s shoulder who was holding Splinter walking stick.

Seb’s breath hitched at the sight, he felt tears forming in his eyes, but he didn’t let them fall and tried to hide them. But he has never been good at hiding anything from his brothers. Seb felt his brothers embraced him in a hug and told him that it was going to be okay.

“We will find our father, so keep your head up. We are going to do everything we can.”

Seb only nodded and buried his head deeper into Mikey’s shoulder.

Chapter Text

It has been a couple of days since the battle with Shredder, Seb was having a bad time and he really needed to talk to people close to his age. His guilt has been eating him alive. He should have been there. Maybe if he was this would have never happened.

He wanted to talk to his brothers about that. Seb looks at his older brothers who are all focused on a single thing. If Seb tried to talk to them they wouldn’t even listen. But he can’t really blame them, they have been stressed for a couple of days.

Raph was more agitated and angry at everything. He has been going out patrolling a lot more and everytime he comes back he seems more pissed off.

Mikey was blaming himself for losing Master Splinter, they had comforted Mikey, but he was still desperate to find Master Splinter and apologize for being the reason Splinter got hurt.

Donnie has been building the new battle shell without proper sleep for weeks, Raph and Leo had taken Donnie to bed to sleep.

Leo has been trying to keep everything under control, but his worry was clearly showing, making everyone feeling more paranoid.

April had been drawing herself at work. She has been living in their home since they came back. So when Casey said that he could get Angel to meet up at the garage, Seb was excited.

That led to Seb waiting on top of a building with Casey.

After a while Angel appeared and gave a high-five to Seb. While Casey went to get something from the store, he promised to be back in ten minutes.

“How are you going?” Angel asked

“Could be a lot better,” Seb said

“So it’s safe to assume things are not going okay?”

“Oh, you have no idea. But I don’t want to talk about it right now. Maybe a little bit later,” Seb said, “By the way what's that?”

“Something I found from the store, I thought it was funny, so here,” Angel gave Seb a turtle plushie, its eyes were red and it was pillow size, ”I hope you like it.”

“It’s perfect,” Seb said with stars in his eyes. As he continued to admire the plushie, “You’re really good at this.”

“You're just too easy,” Angel said teasingly.

“Oh, how dare you,” Seb acted like offended.

“So, where is my gift?”

Seb looked at her and smiled, handing her a knife.

“Holy shit,” Angel said, smiling.

They had been trying to one up one another for a while now. Neither of them know why they started this gift giving competition. But it probably started when Seb had given Angel two shuriken earrings that he had made himself.

Angel was winning, because she realized Seb loved turtle plushies, so she made it her job to find as many as she could and help Seb create a plushie army.

Angel admired her knife, before turning to look at Seb, “So what are you naming it?”

“Ronald!” Seb decided to name the red eyed turtle plushie.

Seb gave a big grin towards Angel, the grin was genuine, but Angel could see the deep sadness in his eyes.

“I can see you are burdened by something. You can talk to me, we are friends after all.”

Seb looked at the city, he took a deep breath and looked back at Angel, “I hate myself for not being with my family when they fought Shredder. . . I understand why I was left behind, I really haven’t proven myself to them and,” Seb shows Angel the scars he got, “I almost died last time when I was fighting Shredder.”

Seb looks down, “I understand that it wasn’t my fault. I know that. Yet, I still can’t stop thinking about the what if’s. What if I went with them, then I could have stayed with Splinter and protected him. This whole thing could have been avoided. I would still have my dad and we would be celebrating our victory.”

“But he’s gone. I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead,” Seb kept talking, his words becoming more and more frantic as he talked.

“I’m such a failure of a so-” Seb didn’t get to finish his sentence when Angel hugged him.

“Never say that. Never ever say that, Seb! I might have never known Splinter as personally as you did, but I know he would never want you to think that way. He made his choice to leave to do the right thing and he left you to keep you safe. I know it sucks, but they did it out of love. They would never want you to feel responsible for whatever happened to them. Even if you still. . . I wish things would have been different.”

The two of them stayed silent, neither of them saying anything for a while. They just kept hugging each other.

“I guess dads love sacrificing themselves for the ‘greater good,” Seb said sadly.

Angel let out a choked laugh, “Yeah, they always do.”

“We can keep regretting what we did, but if we can’t move past it. Then I guess our self-doubt has won,” Seb said.

“. . . Did Splinter teach you that?” Angel asked.

“Yes, he liked to be ominous.”

Angel looked at the night sky as she said, “I wished mine had said something like that. It would be easier to remember him.”

Seb leaned against Angel, “Sorry for your loss.”

Angel shook her head, “It’s not your fault at all. . . . . Haha, I’m so pathetic. This was supposed to be your time to talk, but I made it about myself.”

“You’re not. . . It actually made me feel better to know I’m not alone in feeling this. It’s kind of tragically poetic that we have similar experiences, so much so that we understand each other.”

“It’s almost as if we are soulmates,” April joked.

Seb rolled his eyes, but kept smiling. Neither of them said anything, feeling comfortable just being in the other’s presence. Until Casey came back.

“What’s with you two?” Casey asked, handing them each a drink.

Angel and Seb looked at each other before saying together, “Trauma bonding.”

“Oh, uh. . Hey, Angel, what do you think of your new school?”

“HAHHAHHAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Angel and Seb started laughing hysterically, while Casey looked proud of himself.

After that the three of them talked about more mundane things, but it was so fun that they didn’t notice that time flew past them.

“Next time, I’m bringing you”

“What are you exactly to Seb?” Casey looked smug. It was starting to piss Angel off, so she decided to have a little fun with it.

“We're soulmates,” Angel said back to Casey's shocked face, “But I feel platonic soulmates are a lot closer to what we actually are.”

She could hear Casey sigh in relief. Angel huffed and laughed.

“That's what you get for asking,” Angel hitted Casey’s side.

----------------------------

(This is extra, it’s not really related to the story above, but it gives more insight on Angel’s thoughts.)

Angel likes to spend time with Seb, it is refreshing to have someone who actually appreciated her for her and didn’t pressure her to do anything. Thanks to Seb’s influence, she managed to gain more friends. Seb was not ashamed to be himself, if he didn’t like somebody he made it very clear.

It’s strange.

The first time she met Seb, she didn’t think a lot about him, he was interesting to be around, but there was nothing that made him special, until he mentioned art. After that they bonded and became friends. It was nice to have a friend that was near her age group.

Sadly though, when she got more friends, Seb and her didn’t spend that much time together, but whenever they met they would have a blast talking to each other.

Casey said they would cause mayhem and destroy the world, but he was always proven wrong by them. Angel wasn’t too interested in causing issues and Seb didn’t leave his home unless he was with his brothers or he didn’t have a choice.

Angel also didn’t understand why Casey and her grandmother kept teasing her about Seb.

When she had mentioned this to Seb, who looked even more confused than she did.

They were strictly platonic and Angel was pretty sure Seb wasn’t interested in anyone romantically. How does she know this? Seb makes a lot of hot takes when it comes to love.

“I still don’t understand why they can’t be friends, like sure they dated, but that doesn’t mean you can’t return back to status quo before the whole dating thing.”

“That’s not how dating works.”

“Really? It sounds even more stupid.”

“What do you think a lover is?”

“A best friend.”

“Okay, another question, have you ever wanted to kiss someone on the mouth?”

“No. It sounds gross. I don’t want another person’s bacteria in my mouth.”

That comment made Angel laugh so hard, it hurt. After that discussion for some reason Angel felt a lot more freer in her friendship with Seb.

Chapter Text

It has been a week without Splinter, there has been no sign of him, it feels like he has completely disappeared. The longer Splinter is gone, the likelihood of him being dead is increasing every day. No one is handling it well.

Seb could feel his family tension rising as the days passed, he had been helping with the search and the patrols. Most of the time he is alone, with his brothers, April or even Casey. But today he had asked if Angel wanted to join him. She agreed without any hesitation.

So here he was searching for master Splinter with Angel. They haven’t had any luck finding any evidence of Splinter. After a while, they both decided that they should at least try to search amongst the humans.

As they were walking around the place, Seb was wearing a disguise. Nothing fancy, but still good enough to blend in. They hadn’t found anything, so they decided they needed to have a break and go to the park.

The duo walked around the area, talking about their lives.

“So you know Jenny and Nico, totally have a thing for each other, but they don’t know how to say it,” Angel said frustrated, “I mean it, so oblivious, but they won’t accept it. At this point it is free entertainment.”

Jenny was one of Angel’s new friends, Seb liked to hear Angel talk about school and her schoolmates, it seemed fun. Even if Seb didn’t know these people personally and never will, he still enjoyed the drama they brought with them.

Seb opened up to Angel about how he was scared for Splinter and his family. Through these talks he started to realise more about himself.

“You know Seb, my ears are always open, if you want to talk more about this,” Angel smiled, “But seriously, I will listen if you need it.”

This is why Seb liked to spend time with Angel, he could talk to her about everything and she would tell him about everything she knew. The search changed from an active search to a hang-out and a search for Splinter.

They walked past a shop, where they saw Angel’s grandma buying groceries. Seb had seen her from faraway, but never this close. They watched from a far as Angel’s grandma made her way to her apartment. There weren’t a lot of people around, but there were two suspicious men close to her apartment.

“Angel, I think those guys are going to rob your grandmother,” Seb kept observing the scene, moving closer. Angel agreed and followed him.

Seb faced Angel and taking out the spike gloves, “Do you want to beat up some pickpocketers American style?”

“Hell yeah,” Angel smirked as she took the spikey gloves from Seb’s hand and put them on. She looked back at Seb, giving him a little push with her shoulder. “Don’t look so worried, I can take care of it.” Seb smiled back, but both of their expressions turned serious as they watched the two suspicious men.

April’s grandma was unlocking her door, when the men started to make their move, Seb took out his weapon and started to move to the shadows.

“Hey, Hag! Give us your money-” The bigger man was smacked to the face by a yari’s blunt end.

“Hey what the hell,” The other man was shocked so that he didn’t see Angel, coming behind him and uppercutting him with the spikey gloves. Knocking him out cold.

The first man recovered fast and tried to punch Seb, who dodged gracefully to the side. Before using his staff to hit him in the gut, to make him pass out.

Angel ran to her grandma as Seb watched from the shadow, being happy for Angel. Seb was a little nervous, this was the first time he had ever been this close to Angel's grandma. Seb was debating in his head whenever he should introduce himself to Angel’s grandma or stay in the shadows. But that decision was quickly made for him, when the shell cell beebed.

Seb looked at his shell cell and saw a message from Donnie. His eyes widened at the message, he quickly made a sign to Angel. She nodded in understanding. Seb started to run away back to the lair. He missed how April’s grandmother tried to say something to him.

------------------------------------------------

When Seb was back at the lair, his brothers and April & Casey were already waiting for him. Allegedly his brothers had contacted one of their allies and talked about Splinter disappearance, the guy's vibes were off, so they followed him to the TCRI building, where they are going to break in.

April was going to be the decoy, who will deactivate the alarms and Casey was the crazy hobo, who was going to be the distractions. Seb decided long ago that he was going to join this mission no matter what. Despite the fact that his brothers were still very reluctant. Seb was taking none of it.

“I’m coming with you guys!” Sed said without any hesitation, “Don’t even try to stop me, this is about our father and I will join this mission.” His brothers and April looked uncertain and surprisingly Casey came to back him up.

“Yeah dudes, I know Seb’s just a kid, but he can beat up a lot of people. Also I think it’s safer for him to be with us, otherwise he might actually just come without you guys,” Casey said.

Everyone looked at Leo, who was massaging his forehead and his eyes were closed. He was really thinking about it. That was farther than Seb had anticipated. Seb felt thankful for Casey, but he didn’t know if it was enough.

“I want to help you guys, not from a safe place, I want to be with you guys when you do all the cool stuff.” Seb said.

“Sebbs, it’s really dangerous, we don’t know what might be there,” Donnie said.

“So, that hasn’t stopped you guys or dad before,” Seb argued, it wasn’t that sound, but Seb was going to use the hypocrites to the best of his ability.

“Yeah, but we’re older,” Raph said.

“Only four years, besides I can hide.”

“You don’t have Splinter's blessing to join our mission, Seb,” Mikey said quickly, Seb could tell that he was making excuses.

“Then I use my 12th birthday wish to join you guys on this mission!” Seb said proudly, like he won.

Leo had been listening to everything that has been said. He knows that the most logical thing is to leave Seb out of this, but they need the extra man or in this case turtle power to infiltrate this building. Leo looks at Seb who is proudly looking at the rest of his family, including Casey and April after announcing his birthday wish. Which they all kind of forgot during this whole stress looking for Splinter situation.

Leo took a deep breath and looked Seb straight into his eyes, “You can come, but promise me, to stay in the shadows.”

Seb nodded with a serious expression, but that didn’t last long until he grinned, “Thanks, Leo!”

Leo rolled his eyes, while everyone else looked perplexed. But they didn’t have enough time to comprehend what just happened.

“Get ready, we have a building to break into,” Leo said commandingly.

---------------------------------------------------

The drive to the TCRI-building had been tense, but surprisingly quick. Everything went smoothly and they were on top of the rooftop, while April had managed to turn off the censors. But oddly enough there was no way to get in and the glass wasn’t breakable. So they had to think of a different way to get inside.

They got a message from April, who informed about the airway window she found that had a giant laser gun attached to the end of the wall. Apparently to secure the building. It took a little while, but April turned off the massive laser gun, so now they were in the airways. Seb could hear Casey going crazy on the customer service, before they heard a loud sound of bagging and Casey running to the room to get April out. They managed to keep contact with them until they were fully inside the building, just then they lost contact with both April and Casey.

Now Seb has seen how wild Mikey’s imagination can be, but compared to this. .
It was still a lot weirder.

The inside of the TCRI-building was weirdly sci-fi, there were doors that led to nothing or they looped around and then there was the elevator that didn't work like a regular elevator. The buttons didn’t work. As Raph and Leo went to scout the area, Seb stayed close to Mikey and Donnie. Donnie had no clue how to get the elevator to work, so they would have been screwed if the two of those weirdly human looking things came to the elevator and brought it to the secret floor. Before those things could see them, Donnie, Seb and Mikey stayed on the elevator ceiling to hide. Seb was squeezed right between them.

Once they made it to the secret room, Seb grimaced at how organic yet technologic the place looked. When Mikey and Donnie were looking at everything, the ceiling, floors, and pods. It was all made from something that looked awfully like flesh.

“Okay, Seb. Stay here and if anyone but us comes here, I want you to stab them or get the shell away from them,” Mikey said as he and Donnie went off to investigate, leaving Seb near the elevator.

Seb stayed in the shadows as promised, not getting too close to anything, instead observing what was going on. It was honestly really boring. No one had noticed him and they probably didn’t even have a clue that he and his brother were here.

*ALERT ALERT ! AN INTRUDER ALERT!*

Well, they do know that his brothers are here now. He better get going and move before someone might find him. Seb took out his su-yari and got ready to stab if he needed to.

Seb sees a lot of ‘human’ guards running around with brain looking things straight out of a horror movie. Seb would be a lot more scared of this, if it wasn’t for Mikey’s monster movie marathons.

The guards moved quickly to another area with the brains. Seb continued to stay hidden, but kept moving around the place. His ultimate plan was to find his brothers and Splinter. Luckily to him, it wasn’t that hard to find his brothers who were fighting against the freaky people and some brains. Seb was about to throw a couple of his kunais at them and reveal his hiding spot, but something else caught his attention.

There was a room that had thousands of pods that had brains in them, they pods went from the floor to the ceiling, like how they do in bee colonies. But those things didn’t make him falter, rather there was a singular pod that didn’t have a brain creature in them instead it had something else. Something familiar.

“Dad?”

The word split passed his lips, he didn’t mean to say it aloud. But it’s been so long since he last saw his dad. Seb has missed him, grieved for him and now he is so close.

Seb was snapped out of his shock, when he heard his brothers shouting. Seb threw his kunai at one of the brains that was shooting at his brothers. Donnie looked back at him with a smile.

“I FOUND DAD!” Seb shouted, pointing towards the room where Splinter was. Donnie’s expression changed to one of shock, before becoming a more hopeful one. Mikey and Raph froze for a second, before looking at Leo who didn’t waste any time ordering everyone to get to where Splinter was. Once they made it to the room, Seb helped them destroy the pillar closest to the door and pushed it with his brother to block the door. Meanwhile Donnie went to free Splinter from the pod.

“How long do you guys think this will hold them off?” Seb asked.

“Based on everything we went through, two minutes,” Raph says, while backing away from the door and dragging Seb with him.

“I'll give it a minute,” Mikey says, as he also backs away from the door.

“Donnie, have you figured out how to get Splinter out of there?” Leo asks, getting closer to Donnie.

Donnie is looking at the screen in front of Splinter’s pod, “I don’t know. This whole thing is written in some alien language. . . Give a few minutes.”

“Hurry up then, they are breaking in!” Mikey shouts as the blocked entrance explodes and the alien freaks start pouring in into the room. They didn’t even waste a second before one of them started shooting and the others joined in.

Leo, Mikey, Raph and Seb started fighting the aliens. Their main objective was to stop them from disturbing Donnie and protecting Splinter. They were blocking the laser, all things considered they were doing fine. They were knocking off those brain blob things off their flouting tablets. But things never go too well for them. There were too many aliens and they were starting to corner them.

“Donnie, are you done-” Seb shouted and in that moment Seb saw Donnie getting shot by a laser while Donnie was protecting Master Splinter. He saw how Donnie flew to a side room. Leo was the closest one to the room, so he shouted for the others to retreat and regroup, while making his way to make sure Donnie was okay. Raph, Mikey and Seb followed him to the other room without any hesitation.

The side room had a giant machine in the middle of the room. The machine looked old yet new at the same time. It had wires connected to it from all sides and there was a platform near it.

Leo catched up to Donnie and checked him for injuries. Fortunately Don didn’t seem to be too injured, but he had trouble standing up, so Leo was dragging him towards the platform near the machine with the help of Raph and Mikey. Seb stayed a little farther, making sure that Donnie wasn’t going to fall. They heard footsteps closing in, they were definitely screwed.

Seb’s brothers made it to the platform, but before Seb could join he felt someone grab his shell and yank him away from his brothers. He was soon grabbed by a ‘human’, but Seb wasn’t going down this easily, not again. Seb stabbed the ‘human’ with his yari, making the thing let go of him.

Seb backed away from those creatures, but strangely they weren’t shooting or moving towards him. Seb turned to look at where his brothers were, only for him to see them still on the platform. It had activated and started glowing. Seb looked at the man that was seemingly controlling it.

Seb recognized that man as Mortu, the CEO of TCRI. Seb has seen him on TV multiple times, he has always been smiling and confident. So, why is he looking desperate?

“Get off the transporter. We haven’t perfected it yet!” Mortu shouts as he tries to turn off the transporter.

Transporter

His brothers are on a transporter.

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

Seb runs towards his brothers.

He needs to get to them.

His brothers' faces turn horrified as they try to get off the platform, but can’t. Seb on the other hand is making his way to his brothers by piercing anything that tries to stop him.

The machine was starting to create a lot of noise and the lights were glowing brighter every second that passed.

When Mortu saw Seb trying to join his brothers, he immediately stopped Seb from going near the portal by holding his hand and not letting go even when Seb continued to stab him.

Raph watched as Seb kept stabbing the man, he felt proud, but worried at the same time. Raph could see that Seb was focusing on Mortu’s arm and it was about to break.

They didn’t know where they were going, maybe they were going to die or worse. . . Seb can’t come with them. Raph turned to look at Leo, Mikey and Donnie, they all seemed to have come to the same conclusion.

As Seb was about to break Mortu’s arm, Raph shouted, “Seb, STAY!”

Seb froze and looked at Raph with a confused look. The machine made a sound and Seb saw his brothers' bodies being disintegrated into pieces until there was nothing left.

His brothers were gone, no sight of them, their presence was erased as though nothing had happened.

“Guys…?” No one answered

“Guys!!?” Seb started to pull away Mortu’s hold.

“Raph! Leo! Mikey! Donnie!?” Seb was shouting, he didn’t notice the other aliens coming towards him. Seb could feel his eyes tearing up. His whole body was shaking.

“Don’t leave me!” His voice was breaking.

“Please don’t leave me…” Seb’s voice wasn’t audible as he fell to the ground. Mortu let go of Seb, who was now sobbing.

After a few moments one of the other aliens was readying their weapon, which made Seb tense and get up as fast as possible getting ready to keep on fighting. But Mortu raised his hand to sign to the other to lower their weapons, they did it hesitantly.

Seb looked around and saw that they were surrendering. They pose no visible threat to him and now he was the only one with a weapon. Seb slowly put his weapon back, and stared at Mortu waiting for him to speak.

Seb felt his tear still falling off his face and went to wipe them out. The realization that he was now all alone hit him as he stared once again back to Mortu.

Chapter Text

Seb loves birthdays, like any kid would. He loves the attention he gets, the gift, the cake if they can get one, but most importantly he loves to spend time with his family.

Seb watches as Mikey and Raph try to fight each other, while Leo is desperately trying to stop them. This year Splinter managed to find some cake and they had all been excited. Seb of course got the first slice, but when it came to Raph’s turn Mikey took it.

Seb takes a bite of the cake. It tastes like strawberries and there is a hint of lime. It’s surprisingly delicious in Seb’s opinion.

“Is it good?” Donnie asks, while sitting next to Seb.

Seb nods his head and continues to watch Raph trying to sucker punch Mikey.

Donnie stays quiet before handing something to Seb. It’s a notebook, there are some scratches, but otherwise it is in perfect condition.

“Happy birthday, Sebbie,” Donnie gives Seb a few pats on the head.

Seb looks at the notebook, putting his cake to the side to inspect it further. The longer he looks at it, the more his eyes shine. Before Donnie could say anything or leave, Seb gives him a bone-crushing hug or rather a hug that is as strong as a seven year old could.

“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Seb chants, getting the other’s focus.

Donnie looks at Raph, Leo and Mikey with a very smug look on his face. The three of them know that expression as “I’m the new favorite now.”

Which has been an unspoken competition between the four of them ever since Seb became part of their family. They have all had their time as the favorite older sibling and they know they won’t stay forever, but that doesn’t stop them from competing for it.

It can be small like giving Seb extra snacks or giving him gifts, one time they even took Seb to the surface with them.

-------------------------------------
(Flashback :) )

Seb holds Leo’s hand as they walk through the alleyway. Splinter had made the four older brother Seb’s babysitter for this day, since he had errands to do. Leo was scolding himself for agreeing to this whole thing. His brothers were looking around making sure that no one was near them.

“Wow”

Leo looked down to see Seb admiring the stars. A realization hit Leo that this was the first time Seb has seen stars and he can remember them. He and his brothers have seen them many times before, but Seb had always been too young to remember clearly.

“They’re nice aren’t they?” Leo asks as he helps Seb get on top of a building.

“Yes, they're very pretty,” Seb isn’t even looking at him as he keeps admiring the stars.

“The one that shines the brightest is called the northern star,” Leo says. He is very thankful for listening to Donnie's rant about astronomy. Seb looks where Leo is pointing towards and his eyes widened.

“I wanna be that!” Seb says smiling at Leo, “Can I be the northern star, Leo?”

Leo smiles as he says, “Maybe one day.”

“YES!” Seb holds Leo’s hand tighter.

Maybe the scolding was all worthed.

Later back at the lair. Leo would say that it was still worthed it. Although Seb didn’t say Leo was his favorite, the fact that Seb hung around Leo the following week like a duckling proved that he definitely was the favorite for that week.

-------------------------------------

Then there was that time they accidentally gave Seb a bag full of sugar. Seb was sugar high for hours.

--------------------------------------

Mikey looks down at Seb who is obviously out of it.

“Uhhh, guys what did we give Seb?” Mikey asks as he looks at Donnie and Leo panicking, while Raph is having a mental breakdown over this.

“Dinosaurs and dragons love flying. . . I love dino nuggets and crayons,” Seb says.

Mikey scoops up Seb from the floor, only to realize that Seb has gone completely slack and weighs ten times his actual weight.

“I wanna fly on a dragon.”

“Seb you gotta snap out of it.”

“Rainbow is yummy”

“Seb, please.”

Seb looks at Mikey with a confused expression, before giving him the biggest grin he has ever seen.

“Fav brother,” Seb says before falling asleep.

Mikey looks at Seb’s passed out form, before hugging him and tearing up. He has finally earned the favorite brother mantle.

-----------------------------------------

There was that one time when Donnie gave Seb a bat. They are still unsure why Don gave Seb a bat, but a bat nonetheless.

-----------------------------------------

Donnie watches as Seb tries to teach the bat to fly. Don stands nearby just in case something bad happens.

“Why won’t you fly?” Seb asks while trying to get the bat to fly.

“You’re scaring it,” Donnie says matter of factly, while sitting down next to Seb “Just let it rest on your palm for a while and then it will try to fly.”

Seb nods and lets the bat just cling to his palm.

They continued to stare as the bat slowly came towards Seb and when it was right next to Seb’s face it nuzzled before taking flight and leaving the cave.

Seb gives it a little wave, before turning to look at Donnie with a smug look, “I’m an animal whisperer.”

That is definitely wrong, but Donnie is going to entertain him.

“Oh and what are you going to do next?”

“I’m going to talk to a bird!”

Donnie should have expected this from a four year old.

“That’s neat, tell us when you do.”

Seb looks at his tiny hands and claps them together. A sure sign that Seb had an idea that wasn’t related to anything that they have talked about before.

“Can you teach me to speak with lizards? I want to have an army of them.”

“Mmmmmmmmmmmm, sure.”

“YEEEES!” Seb jumps in excitement, while Donnie feels proud. Seb then proceeded to drag Donnie to go find some lizards. He is the favorite for that day.

-----------------------------------------

Lastly there was the time when Raph gave Seb a turtle plushie. He got extra points for that.

----------------------------------------

Now satisfying a three year old is either the easiest thing or it is a puzzle made by gods to torment you.

But most of the time the answer is, give them a random object.

Now a new problem, Seb needs to go to bed. But he doesn’t want to, so there is only one thing Raph could do.

Raph hands over a very roughened up looking turtle plushie. Seb takes it and rubs his face against it, while chirping at it. Works every time.

“You like it?” Raph asks.

“Chirp!” :D

“Neat,” Raph picks up Seb to get him to sleep.

“Chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirp,”

“I know you want to stay awake, but you have to sleep.”

“Chirp?”

“Yes, I will be with you.”

“Chirp.”

Seb hugs the plushie closer to his body. While Raph takes him to bed.

-----------------------------------------

Sure they are not the best babysitters, but they tried. They have somehow made Splinter even more protective of Seb and grounded them too many times to count.

But back to the birthday. At the end of the day Splinter would always tell them how they found Sebastiano.

It always made Seb laugh at how outrageous it sounds.

He was found in a tiny box and the only reason he was found was because he decided to cry. Then he was adopted to a mutant family.

Seb wouldn’t change a thing.

But change always comes.

His eleventh birthday was fun and all that, he got more expensive gifts and he spent a large amount of time with his brothers. The birthday has been standard, until his brother had to leave to save some people from the mob.

That had left only him and Splinter alone in the swerve to celebrate his birthday. Splinter could tell that Seb was feeling salty about the whole thing.

“My son, come sit with me,” Splinter said, making room for Seb.

Splinter took out a tea set and started brewing green tea by boiling the water in a cast iron tea pot, “I know, you're upset that your brothers are not here, but they have important things they need to do.”

“I’m aware, but I don’t have to like it.”

“You have me, my son,” Splinter adds the green tea powder to the water and waits for it to brew.

Seb’s mouth makes a straight line as he tries to avoid Splinter eyes, “It’s not the same.”

Splinter pours a cup of green tea on two cups, “They will come back. You just have to be patient.”

“They could just stay.”

“But that is not their way. They are not doing this out of malice, they are just busy,” Splinter pushes a tea cup towards Seb.

Seb accepts the cup and brings it up to his mouth.

“They will always return as will I. You will never be alone on your birthday,” Splinter takes a sip of his tea.

Seb looks at his tea, it’s still warm. Seb lets out a sigh, but smiles as he takes a sip.

“Feeling better.”

Seb nods and smiles at Splinter, “Thank’s dad, I needed that.”

“It was nothing, now let’s get ready for your brother’s return.” Splinter finishes the tea and gets up. Seb nods and gulps the tea in one go before following Splinter out of the room.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Seb looks at the platform where his brothers were a moment ago.

He keeps repeating under his breath.

They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back.They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back.

Today is his birthday. They wouldn’t miss his birthday. .

Splinter wouldn’t lie to him.

.

.

.

Screw his birthday

He wants his brothers and father back!

He doesn’t care if they miss it or if they forgot, he just wants them back.

Please, give them back.

Please

Please

Please

Seb’s eyes tear up, as he struggles against Mortu.

“I want my family”

Chapter Text

Being the CEO of TCRI is hard, but Mortu didn’t know what to think of this day. Not only did their turtle allies break into their facility to look for their father, but they also had a younger sibling who was now glaring at him with murderous intent.

Thinking about it. It wasn’t fair for the turtles to be left in the dark about their father, they should have expected them to go look for him, but the past was in the past and now they could do the best with what they had.

He looked at the child, who tensed, but refused to look away from him.

“Excuse us for this young one, we didn’t mean to scare you or cause you any harm,” Mortu started, he could see the doubt in the young ones eyes. “As you see we are healing your beloved Master Splinter, he will be fine, I promise you that.”

The young one didn’t seem convinced at all, his weapon still pointed towards him.

“Well I should introduce myself, I am Mortu and I am an utrom, the alien species that you can see around you,” The child was still stressed, but seemed to be listening to him. “We are making our way to our home planet, the portal your brother just went through isn’t meant to disintegrate you, but to teleport you.”

Mortu saw how that realization made the kid’s shoulders slack. He was gaining the young ones' trust.

“I apologize for not telling your family sooner about Splinter, but it was for our safety to keep that information hidden,” The other utroms were looking more intensely at the child. “Can I get your name?”

The young mutant was thinking about it. There was a lot of doubt and conflict that flashed behind his eyes. The youngling took a deep breath.

“My name is Sebastiano . . . . And I guess you're a good guy?” Sebastiano looked unsure, tilting his head, which in human terms was adorable. Mortu smiled, “Yes, I would like to be classified as that, you and your brother managed to cause quite a lot of mayhem in our laboratory."

One of the urtoms mindlinked “Uhm, actually that child is the reason for why the lab is not as trashed out as it could be, he redirected the lasers away from the tubes.”

Mortu was impressed, the child had the ability to fight and sneak around undetected. Thanks to the mindlink between utroms, they were able to exchange this information without telling the child.

The other utroms seemed to relax at that revolution, some of them were leaving to fix up the broken areas.

Morty watched as the young turtle seemed very confused as the utroms started to rebuild their lab. There was a flash of guilt for thrashing their whole place, but from what Mortu could tell, the turtle didn’t seem to regret it. Neither would Mortu blame him.

“I think I should apologize for me and my brother, this whole destruction was our fault,” Sebastiano apologizes hesitantly, he didn’t take his eyes off Mortu. But this was good for their trust.

“Apology accepted, now we should get started on getting your brothers back.”

Sebastiano nodded, as Mortu went to work on the machine. Fortunately it wasn’t damaged, so it was only a matter of time before they would get it working. There was the problem that the turtle would have probably moved from their spot, so they needed to find them.

Sebastiano kept his distance away from him, but Mortu noticed that he was watching him work and decided to teach Sebastiano how to use it. He knows it is a rash decision, but now that they are going to leave soon. So it would be helpful if someone else also knew how to operate this machine.

They worked together, Mortu was pleasantly surprised to see that Sebastiano understood what was happening around him. He was able to articulate how the machine transporter worked and knew a lot about engineering. It was rather peaceful, that was only disturbed by Sebastiano asking him about something. Mortu saw how Sebastiano calmed down, it seemed as if he was used to this kind of thing.

“Donnie- I mean Mortu, how do you activate this part?” Sebastiano asked.

“Swipe the blue bar to the left and press the purple button,” Mortu answered calmly. If Mortu had to guess, Donnie was probably one of his brothers.

They continued to work with Mortu showing Sebastiano how to operate the machine and Sebastiano putting everything into his memory.

It has been about 3 hours since the older turtles disappeared. Mortu and Sebastiano decided to take a break for a little while. By that they mean Seb isolates himself and watches everything like a hawk, making sure that they are safe. Mortu nor the other utroms mind this behavior, since it isn’t harming them.

But Mortu saw that this could be a problem. He has been reading about stress responses, Sebastiano needs a distraction. He called the alligator mutant he affectionately named Leatherhead to come down and help with this situation.

It took a few minutes for Leatherhead to appear. Sebastiano’s head rose when he noticed another mutant, he was clearly confused. Leatherhead also seemed excited to have another mutant in the area.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Leatherhead walked inside, he couldn’t hide his excitement. There was another mutant who was also sentient. He knew that there was a possibility, but he didn’t know he would meet one, especially today. So when Mortu asked him to keep the mutant some company, Leatherhead was delighted.

In Leatherhead's opinion the new mutant seemed intrigued by having another mutant to talk to, yet they were clearly cautious when they were talking to him.

“Hello fellow mutant, my name is Leatherhead. It's an honor to meet you,” Leatherhead said, while extending his hand towards the other mutant.

The mutant looked at his arm, then back at him. They were looking for something and Leatherhead thinks they found it when they accepted his hand.

“Sebastiano Splinterson. It’s nice to meet you, too,” Sebastiano said.

After the initial introduction, Leatherhead started talking about his family. He saw Sebastiano’s uncertainty and decided to calm things down. It worked!

“So you're telling me that you were a pet crocodile who got mutated and adopted by the aliens,” Seb looked at Leatherhead with wonder.

“Yes, and you have a family,” Leatherhead asked.

“Yep, but… they are busy at the moment,” Seb looked away with empty eyes.

Leatherhead looked at the Splinter tube with understanding, “If it counts, I am sure your father and brothers will be with us very soon.” Leatherhead saw the light in Sebastiano’s eyes return.

“The utroms are not bad, but I can say you had a horrible first experience with them,” Leatherhead slowly put his hand on Seb’s head and before he placed it, he waited for Seb’s consent. Seb raised his head and allowed it to be petted.

“But I can promise you that they mean no harm to you, they will get your family back and will return back to their home,” Leatherhead said.

“What about you then?” Seb looked Leatherhead worriedly, “Where will you go?”

“I will leave with them,” Leatherhead smiled.

“Oh.”

At that moment the guardians came to the transporter room. One of them noticed Sebastiano and Leatherhead talking. He made a bee-line for them.

Seb tensed, but Leatherhead put his hand on Seb’s shoulder. He then looked at the Guardian. “How may I help you?”

“I want to know where the other turtles are?”

“They have activated the portal and were stuck into it,” Leatherhead said calmly.

The guardian's face changed into the one of concern, “who is he then?”

“Apparently the turtles had a younger brother,” Leatherhead watched as the guardian looked puzzled for a moment, before accepting the news. He still looked like he needed to lay down. The guardian did recover after a while and was now staring at Seb.

“You met my brothers, didn't you?” Seb said accusingly, like the guardian was the whole reason his brothers were gone.

“Yes, that is correct, I was the one who met your brothers," Guardian said calmly, while Seb was glaring at him.

Leatherhead was in the middle of this intense staring contest. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew he needed to do something. “So, do you want to join our little group?” Leatherhead asked innocently, while Seb and the guardian looked at Leatherhead confused. But saw the hope in his eye and didn’t argue back.

“So, how has everything been going?” Leatherhead asked.

“Could be better,” Sebastiano said a little bitterly.

“I am not going to incriminate myself,” The guardian answered.

This was going to be more difficult than Leatherhead thought.

“Good to know. I have been having an amazing day.”

The little group was awkward, except for Leatherhead who was having the best day of his life. His enthusiasm slowly, but surely made the other two join. Their talks had started to change from talking about the utroms to talking about Seb’s family shenanigans.

“Despite everything going around, your brother Leonardo seems like an extremely honorable person,” The guardian said.

“He is!” Seb leaned his head down, “They keep getting themselves into dangerous situations all the time. Like they had to fight a trash man one time, because he was enslaving homeless people.”

The guardian looked shocked, “A trash man was enslaving homeless people.”

“Yep, but my brothers threw him into the Ocean”

The guardian was in a state of existential denial, while Leatherhead was peacefully having fun.

“Your brothers seem interesting. I hope that I can meet them,” Leatherhead said.

“I hope too, you are fun to be around,” Seb said, giving him a little smile.

“Well, thank you,” Leatherhead smiled.

Leatherhead was happy to see Sebastiano being happy. Even if it came at the cost of the guardians' understanding of this world.

The time seemed to fly and soon it had been about 7 hours since Seb’s brother had disappeared. Sadly Leatherhead and the Guardian had to go to help with the preparations. Leaving Seb alone with Mortu, once again.

“I don’t know if we will see each other again, so I wanted to say this. It was nice knowing you, Leatherhead,” Sebastiano said.

“I will miss you, too. But don’t worry about big old me. I can handle anything,” Leatherhead said, while the guardian was giving a thumbs up in the background.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mortu knows they don’t have long before they are going to leave. Sebastiano and his family deserve to know the truth about how their species got here. It would be easier if they asked him to go to one of the memory pods, but. Mortu looks at Sebastiano who is looking around unsure of what he is supposed to do now and he is holding his weapon. They don’t have the young ones trust and from what he has read, if the child doesn’t trust you it won’t do anything you ask them to do.

The best course of action would be to tell the story in snippets to Sebastiano.

“So Ch’rell is the reason for why we are here.”

“Huh?” Sebastiano turns to look at Mortu.

“He was this war criminal that destroyed planets and took everything he could get to rule the galaxy. We managed to capture him, but he crashed our plane to this planet. We’ve been stuck here for a thousand years.”

“I.. What?”

“Ch’rell is also the fake Oroku Saki or Shredder.”

“Hold up. Shredder’s an alien freak brain?”

“I choose to ignore that description, but yes. Is there something you don’t understand?”

“. . . You can’t just drop that on me! I- . I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this information!? Do I stab him in the gut? Or use this information to mock him?”

“I see I made an error in estimating your capability to absorb this information.”

“I . . . I want my dad.”

They fell into an awkward silence. Mortu revaluating his understanding of mutant children and Sebastiano being overwhelmed with this information.

-------------------------------------------------------

Seb kept tapping his foot on the floor. It has been 40 minutes since the reveal that Shredder is an utrom. Seb still feels light headed about the reveal, he looks up at Splinter’s pod. Mortu said to him that Splinter would wake up soon, but it was taking forever.

Then Seb heard a deep from the pods and Splinter’s pod opened unprompted. Splinter looked around confused, he didn’t even have time to register anything when Seb tackleted him to a hug.

Seb buried his face to Splinter’s neck. He could feel his father’s fur, hear his breathing and feel his body warmth.

His dad is here.

His dad is alive and hugging him.

Everything is going to be alright.

Seb forces himself not to cry out of relief, instead he tightens his hold on Splinter.

“My son, why are you here?” Splinter comforted his son who had buried his face in his arms, “Where are your brothers?”

Seb took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself down. Seb was sure that his voice would break if he tried to speak right away. He just felt so happy to be able to talk to his dad after the week and 8 hours of stress. He felt safe. Now he just needed his brothers back.

“We tried to break in here to look for you, but Leo, Raph, Mikey and Donnie were found, so they set off an alarm. So we had to fight a lot of utroms. At some point Donnie got shot and was pushed to the transporter, then Leo, Raph and Mikey followed him and they somehow got the machine working and it sent them away!”

Splinter was puzzled, he was proud of them for being able to infiltrate the TCRI-building, but worried because now said sons are god knows where.

Splinter looked down at his son, who was holding onto him as if he let go he would vanish. He smiled and started to stroke Seb’s shell to tell him that he was here.

Seb leaned into his touch and they stayed like that for 20 minutes. No one came to bother them, they could finally have some much needed peace. But that peace was short lived when the guardian Seb had been speaking and ran to them.

“Your brothers have returned!”

Seb and Splinter didn’t waste any time. They were on their feet and were running with the guardian to get to the transporter room. The closer they got the more fighting and the sound of shooting they heard. They needed to hurry or everything was going to be destroyed.

--------------------------------------------
(Meanwhile in space before they got portaled)

“And that’s why Earth’s the greatest,” Mikey said proudly to Professor Honeycott who is now stuck in a robot body.

“That sounds lovely, Michelangelo. I wish I could also see this great place called pizza.”

“That’s not what he meant,” Donnie chimed in, while working on the controllers.

“Oh, forget it. Donnie, we need to get back to master Splinter and Seb,” Raph said, helping Donnie do the finishing touches in their teleporter.

“I hope we aren’t too late,” Leo says, looking worried. Raph, Mikey and Donnie stay silent, but the sentiment is echoed.

Professor Honeycott looks around worriedly, but curiously, “Who might Master Splinter and Seb be?

“They are our family, master Splinter is our father and Sebbie is the youngest brother,” Donnie said.

“Oh, can you tell me more about them?”

“Well for starters master Splinter is the best. He introduced us to pizza,” Mikey said, smiling fondly.

“He taught us everything we know,” Donnie said as he did finishing touches on the transporter.

“He’s the most skilled ninja in the world,” Leo said.

“He could kick anyone’s shell if they gave him a reason,” Raph said grinning.

“What about your younger brother?” Professor Honeycott asked.

“He’s petty and straight forward,” Raph answered.

“A strong critic,” Mikey adds.

“Fast learned, but I’ve seen him fail spectacularly," Donnie smiled.

“. . . He’s a worrycat, but that hasn’t stopped him before,” Leo said.

“I wish to meet them,” Professor Honeycott said.

“You will,” Donnie turned on the transporter machine.

Chapter Text

Splinter and Seb were running towards the teleportal room to meet Leo, Raph, Mikey and Donnie. Their speed increased by each step until they were sprinting through the halls. The closer they got, the clearer the sound of fighting and gunshots became.

“Sebastiano, behind me,” Splinter said, to which Seb nodded.

Seb took out his yari, while Splinter readied his stance. The utroms that were running behind them were also holding guns.

Strangely the sound of fighting had quieted down. Seb and Splinter feared the worst.

When they entered the room, the fighting was already over. The transporter had powered down, the utroms and Mortu were still tense, but Seb wasn’t interested in that.

His brothers were alive and well. Strangely they had an animatronic robot with them. Seb would have been a lot more intrigued about it, if it wasn’ t for the fact that he learned aliens are real.

Leo, Mikey, Raph,Donnie and the robot hadn't noticed him and Splinter yet. They were still in their fighting stances, ready to attack and kill. Mortu was trying to tell them something, but he didn’t get to finish when Seb tackled Donnie to the ground.

“SEB?!”

“I see, you have returned safely, my sons,” Splinter said, while smiling.

“Master Splinter!” Leo, Raph, Mikey and Donnie shouted in unison.

“Are you alright, Sensei?”

“Are you guys hurt?”

“Did they hurt you? Cause I’ll kill em-”

“What did we miss?” Leo said, while putting his hand on Raph’s shoulder to calm him down.

“We are allied to the utroms, again.”

“Okay, this might as well happen,” Mikay said, while giving a thumbs up.

Seb was ignoring what was happening around him, only noting that Donnie had lifted him up and was taking him somewhere with the others. The adrenaline had finally left Seb’s body, he felt safe with his whole family around him. Even the weird robot couldn’t change that.

When he finally started paying attention, he realized he was in a memory chamber. Leatherhead had mentioned it to Seb and now that Seb was here. He didn’t want to enter that thing.

“This should explain everything to you,” Mortu said, while looking at Master Splinter and the older turtles. Leo, Raph, Donnie and Mikey were a little hesitant, but with the encouragement of Splinter they decided to take the offer.

Mortu looked at Seb, asking if he wanted to join. Seb shook his head, backing off a little.

“Are you coming, Seb?” Leo asked as he got into the pod.

“No, someone has to keep a lookout,” Seb said. Leo looked conflicted for a second, before nodding.

Mortu then moved to the controller and started the matrix. While the machine began working, the robot addressed him.

“Are you Sebastiano?”

“Yes. . . Do you need something?” Seb asked with suspicion.

“I am doctor Honeycutt, a former human in a robot body as you can see. I am a friend of your brothers. They talked a lot about you while we were in space and running away from the dictators.”

“Oh, that explains some things. . . Wait, they’ve been running from who?-”

“Yes, the moment we got time to talk, they were so worried about you, since you were the only one left behind. Raphael was demanding me to build the portal right away. They were afraid that something had happened to you and Master Splinter.” Fugitoid started to start off as Seb was digesting the information. “Leonardo was trying to get a connection with you when he was meditating, but he wasn’t able to. Donatello was working non-stop to get back and Michelangelo was mostly laying down on the floor. But with dictators coming after us, it was difficult to achieve.”

“Also I’m so happy to meet you. Sebastiano.”

“Me, too?” Seb was trying to comprehend everything that he said.

“Oh, I hope that wasn’t too much information, I was just so excited to meet you after everything,” Fugitoid said sympathetically, but his attention was taken away by the control set.

Leaving Seb to stare blankly and quietly whispers “Why do all the adults have to be confusing.”

-------------------------------------

Seb looks at the pods where his family is inside a matrix. It was, to put it frankly, scary.

But at least nothing bad was happening.

Seb continued to observe Mortu and Honeycott, they were getting along very well. Which didn’t surprise Seb at all, since they both were similar.

After about thirty minutes, Seb was starting to miss Leatherhead and even that guardian.

It was getting really boring, just standing around and waiting. Seb was going to regret saying that in his mind.

But that didn’t last long until the alarm system let out an earsplitting shrill

All the systems of the memory chamber were malfunctioning for an unknown reason. The chamber entrapped Seb’s family, making them unable to wake up unless they found another way.

“Mortu, what is going on?!” Seb shouted.

“We are under attack,” Mortu said, while trying to figure out how to solve this.

Professor Honeycott put on the TV to show that the TCRI-building was surrounded by the US military, which is reasonable, but not fun at all. But that wasn’t the only problem, since not even 10 minutes later the security was broken into by the US military and the utroms needed to leave like in right now.

The longer Seb kept watching the news, the more his stress levels were increasing. Seb’s focus kept going from the news to his family back to the news. Seb trusted his family would be fine after all they have survived weirder things. But time was running out. Fortunately before Seb could go into full panic maniac mode, his family’s pods opened and they were free just like how Seb knew they would be.

“What’s going on?” Donnie asked.

“The US military is trying to break into this building!” Seb shouted, running towards his family with Honeycott.

“They send the military!?” Mikey shouted.

“Yes and-” Before Seb could finish the front door was destroyed. Everyone in the room turned to look at the entrance.

From the smoke arose Shredder with Hun, head of Baxter Stockman and the foot ninjas.

“The foot’s also here?!” Mikey looked at Seb who was as baffled as he was.

“Apparently,” Raph said, while taking his out his sais. Everyone else took out their weapon or readied for the battle.

Shredder walked calmly across the room until he was in the middle the rest of his men followed close behind. Shredder’s focus was only on Mortu, if he wasn’t wearing a mask you could see the absolute hatred Shredder felt as he took one step after another.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Mortu?”

“Not long enough.”

Shredder looked around the room, observing each one of them. His and Seb’s eyes met for a moment and Seb could swear that Shredder was amused, “At least this time you taught your allies to not be traitors, I applaud you for that.”

“You used man’s insecurities to get us last time. I promised myself to never let you have that opportunity again.”

With that exchanged all hell broke loose. Shredder launched himself at Mortu and they began their fight. The foot ninja didn’t waste any time as they went straight for Leo, Raph, Mikey, Donnie and Splinter.

Seb felt phantom pain in his right arm after seeing Shredder again. Seb remembers the pain he felt back at April’s house, the feeling of helplessness and despair as he fought. At that moment Seb knew that he wasn’t ready to fight Shredder again.

“YOU!”

Seb turned towards the voice, his body finally able to move again.

Hun was coming towards him and from the looks of it he wanted revenge. The purple eyepatch was clear evidence to Seb that he had done some damage. He felt calmer as he readied himself for Hun’s attack.

“I have waited for so long to get back at you, lizard,” Hun said, smiling cynically.

“I’m a turtle and hate to break it to you, but I’ll be the one winning.” Seb said as he aimed his yari towards hun.

Hun came running at Seb, who dodged to the left, and tripped Hun so that he would hit the chamber.

Hun quickly recovered and threw the tube at Seb, who was surprised. The tube hit him on the shoulder, dislocating it.

“This is for my eye, you scum of the sewer!” Hun shouted.

“You hit my shoulder, not my eye, Hunsy!” Seb screamed back.

Seb threw four kunais towards Hun who got hit only by two. Hun threw more things towards Seb who skillfully avoided them. Their fight was cut short when Hun heard Shredder’s orders to help him. They have both been solely focusing on each other that they didn’t notice what was happening around them. A clear error in Seb’s case, who should know better.

Mortu and Honeycott had fled the room a while ago and one of the tubes was broken that was now releasing ungodly amounts of ‘water’.

“This doesn't end here you demon!” Hun shouted, but before Seb could say anything, he was taken by Raph to a safer place.

“That was nice, next time try for his other eye,” Raph said, while stabbing one of the elite guards, “But we are getting out of here, now.”

Raph’s eye then noticed the dislocated shoulder, his gaze grew angrier and without saying a word he popped back into place.

Seb already knew what Raph was about to do to prepare himself mentally, but it still caused him to whine at the pain as it was pushed back in place.

At the same time, Shredder left the room that was starting to flood.

“How do we get out of here, Donnie?”

“These walls are organic. . Hit these walls as hard as you can! That way it will spit us out!”

They didn’t waste any time hitting the wall until it was in enuóugh pain to throw them out into the hallway.

“We need to get to Mortu and the others!” Leo said.

“But where are they?” Mikey asked, while helping Seb clean his bandana.

“The teleporter room!” Donnie shouted, already running with Raph hot on his tail, “We need to go now!”

Didn’t have to tell them twice since they were all running towards the transporter room. As they ran every imaginable alarm sound was going off in that building.

When they made it to the transporter room Shredder was there, already having a grudge match against Mortu. Both of them were in a heat of battle while Professor Honeycott and some of the other utroms were held captive.

The head Baxter Stockman was trying to turn on the transporter to send them to hell if Seb had to guess.

“AARGH!” Mortu shouted as he was also pushed to the transporter platform. Making Splinter, Leo, Raph, Donnie and Mikey to focus on the foot and Shredder. Meanwhile Seb was trying to sneak around to kick Stockman.

The fight gets more and more intense with everyone battling one another and going for the kill. At some point Donnie had managed to get close to Honeycott and asked him to use his voice mimicking system to free Stockman of Shredder’s control.

He then proceeded to use this new found freedom to try to attack Shredder, but he was too far away. Luckily there was someone that was going to help him. Stockman didn’t have time to turn around when Seb kicked him towards Shredder. Stockman then clung to Shredder, electrocuting him until the armor emitted a foul smell and Shredder stopped moving. As a parting gift Stockman threw a light up match from his robotic spider body into Shredder’s armor, starting a fire.

Stockman got up from Shredder and finally made his getaway. Unlike Hun and the elite ninjas who were by Shredder’s side trying to put off the fire inside Shredder’s armor. Realizing there was nothing they could do to help Shredder if they stayed here, they all started to retreat.

“This is not over turtles! This is not the last time you will see us!” Hun then turned to look at Seb, “One day you will lose your eyes and it will be the foot’s hands.”

“Dream on sucker!” Seb shouted after. While Leo gently pushed Seb behind him. Seb might not be worried about Hun, but Leo sure was.

They watched as something slipped from Shredder’s hands and hit the floor. The thing embedded itself into the ground and started infecting the whole area. As Donnie was stopping the transporter from sending Mortu, Honeycott and the couple of utroms to hell.

“It’s a virus bomb! Everyone, we need to evacuate, right now!” Mortu shouted and sent a mind link to all utroms in the building.

Mikey tried to get the bomb off the floor, but it was no use. So the utroms had to evacuate everybody out. First they needed to get the utroms back to their home planet then they could send the turtles and Splinter away from this building.

As more and more utroms and guardians were leaving, Seb noticed that Leatherhead wasn’t here. In fact, no one has seen Leatherhead for a while now. As the last of the utroms and the professor honeycutt were getting ready to leave, Honeycott and his brothers had an emotional goodbye. Seb went to Mortu who was getting ready to leave.

“Mortu, where is Leatherhead? Isn’t he coming with you?”

“I don’t know, a message was sent that everyone must come to the teleport room,” Mortu said worriedly.

Before they could think deeper, there was a large explosion that shook the whole building. Mortu looked at the entrance as if he was waiting for Leatherhead to come, but he didn’t. Then more explosions were heard. Mortu reluctantly got on the transporter as it started to transport him, he looked at Seb and his family.

“Thank you for everything,” Mortu said before disappearing.

Then it was their turn to leave, Seb started programming the teleportal to send them to one of the near-by alleyways. The explosions were getting louder and the building was going to collapse any moment now.

“It’s done, everyone get on it,” Seb shouted pushing the start button. As they were reduced to molecules and teleported away Seb looked at the entrance hoping that Leatherhead was coming, but he wasn’t. With that they all teleported away.

----------- ----------------- ---------

It was a weird sensation to be torn apart into atoms and then reassembled seconds later. It didn’t hurt, but it felt very exposing. Seb could still feel his bones and nerves. Seb around only to notice that they were in the air.

“Are you ki-” Before Seb could finish his sentence he dropped down with the rest of his family on top of the battle shell where April and Casey are waiting anxiously.

April was the first one to react, she pulled Seb off and hugged him, while looking at the rest of the family, “Guys! Master Splinter! You're alive.” April smiled and hugged everybody as they came off the roof.

“I suggest we continue our reunion somewhere in a less conspicuous location.” Splinter said, while smiling.

After Casye had high-fived everyone he turned to look at Seb with a smug face he asked, “What took you guys, so long?”

Seb’s eye twitch, he would have jumped on Casey if it wasn’t for Leo and Donnie holding him back.

“We’ll tell you later, but right now. Can we go somewhere peaceful, like your farmhouse?” Mikey said, turning Casey around to not face Seb, who had stuck his tough out towards Casey.

Chapter Text

“Let me get this straight, you guys,” Casey points towards Leo, Raph, Mikey and Donnie, “went to space, saved a previously human genius who is now a robot with no rights, were on a run from two dictatorships and fought in a death match.”

“Sounds about right,” Mikey said as he opened the chip bag.

“You,” Casey points towards Splinter, “were in a healing coma.”

“That is correct,” Splinter said.

“And you,” Casey points towards Seb, “somehow made friends with the whole alien species, and mutant alligator, and learned how to use a transporter machine.”

Seb looked at Casey with a bored expression, but still nodded.

“Then you guys,” Casey pointed towards Seb and Splinter, “found out that Shredder is an alien. An ALIEN! What is even this word anymore?”

“Still a world, but a lot weirder,” Donnie said, while taking a couple of chips from Mikey’s bag.

“For you at least, that was Tuesday for us,” Raph said, while patting Casey on the back.

“I’m questioning your guys life choices if this is normal for you,” Casey says while taking a handful of Mikey’s chips.

“Hey! Take your own bag,” Mikey says while playfully pushing Casey who also pushed back, which led to the two of them playfighting on the ground.

Raph looked at the two, then just shrugged his shoulders as he also joined in.

Everyone else stared at them in silence, most of them disappointed and others amused. But it wasn’t interesting, so to spice things up, Seb took a bag of chips and placed it on the picking basket.

“I’m betting my bag of chips on Mikey,” Seb said

“Raph,” Donnie said, while putting a chocolate bar on the picking basket.

Leo side-eyed the two, but he still placed a bag of marshmallows on top of the basket, “Raph.”

April let out a laugh, “So no votes for Casey? That won’t do,” She then put a cookie box in the mix.

They then proceeded to watch the showdown and to everyone's shock, except Splinter's. Mikey actually won. But they overcame that shock as quickly as it came.

“I'm taking these,” Seb said with a grin.

“Now, my sons, It seems you have done your workouts, it is time for us to continue our training,” Splinter said as he stood up, which was followed by groans.

Casey looked victorious for a second, before he noticed April looming over him with a smile, “And you are going to clean yourself, Jones.”

“Yes ma’am,” Casey said blushing, as he got up and followed April back to the farmhouse.

---------------------------------

The farmhouse was a much needed time for vacation, but training never stops for any of them. So, in the morning the very first thing they did was training, then they had a break, but that didn’t last long.

The training was mostly learning to use their other senses to observe their surroundings, for example, smell, hearing or touch. Which is why they were all wearing a blindfold.

It has been hours, and even Casey and April had time to start another picnic.

“We are finished for the day.” Master Splinter says as he trips Mikey, who falls on top of Seb followed by Raph and Donnie. Leo was the only one who didn’t get stuck into the turtle pile.

“Help me,” Seb said as he tried to crawl himself out of the pile, but failed miserably. Leo extended his hand, which Seb took and yanked him out.

“Thanks,” Seb said, while Leo placed him down.

“No problem,” Leo said.

“Can you help me, too?” Mikey asks, extending his hand.

“You're on top of that pile, Mikey, You can stand up fine,” Leo says.

“The betrayal, from my own brother. Oh, this cruel world,” Mikey dramatically puts his hand on his forehead. Meanwhile Leo rolls his eyes, but decides to take Mikey’s hand and pull him up, to which Mikey grins victoriously.

“Where’s my helping hand, Leo?” Raph asks smugly. Leo looks at Raph with annoyance, but still takes his hand, as he sighs in defeat as he pulls Raph up with Donnie.

April lets out a small chuckle as she watches the brothers. Splinter sits down next to her and starts making tea.

The brothers soon join them and take their own places. Donnie and Mikey and Leo are next to each other, Raph is next to April and Casey, and Seb has taken his gambling wins and sat down next to Splinter.

“So, did any of you see the latest announcement from that movie company?” Casey asked out of the blue.

“That they are going bankrupt? Yeah,” Mikey said.

“No, they are making another remake- They are what!?” Casey turned to look at Mikey who was drinking his tea unbothered.

“Yeah, Sad really, they were a classic,” Seb adds, taking a sip of his tea, “Anyway, does anyone have something new they wanted to share or not?”

“Hold up, we are not stopping this discussion right now, Raph?” Casey says, turning to look at Raph.

“Dude, that company has lost its magic years ago, it had it coming,” Raph says.

“And their company policies were also breaking human rights, so it was to be expected,” Leo says.

“It’s sad to see, really, they had so many franchises in their use and still did nothing with them,” Donnie adds.

“Oh my gosh,” Casey says, looking like his world is crumbling down, while April pats him on the back.

“So, have you heard about the new ice cream place in New York?” April asks, diverting the conversations from the failing movie company.

“I have not, can you tell us more about it,” Master Splinter says.

“Even better, I will take you all there once we get back to New York,” April smiles.

As time went on none of them noticed the day turning into a night. Their conversations filled their surroundings. They mostly talked about current events and random facts. They were avoiding talking about the whole alien thing, but in the end it can’t be avoided.

“I feel stupid for believing that Oroku Saki was a good guy, I really hoped that he was telling the truth,” Leo says with clear disappointment in his eyes.

“Good thing we opened your eyes, leader,” Raph says, giving Leo a playful push to get him out of his spiral.

“Yeah, thanks guys, especially you sensei,” Leo says, smiling. Splinter smiles back at his son, nodding.

“You know, it’s not really hard to believe that Shredder is an alien, especially after he kicked our shells back on that rooftop and in the antique store. He came out of the fire with no burn and when Leo dissipated him, he’s still alive, yet again,” Mikeys says while eating a handful of marshmallows.

“It’s almost as if god doesn't want to kill him,” Casey says.

“Do you guys think he’s dead? I mean Baxter got him,” Seb asks.

“Logically he should be dead, being burnt alive and electrocuted should be enough to kill anyone, but maybe he isn’t. We need more information and evidence to be sure,” Donnie says, taking a bite of a chocolate bar, “This also got me thinking. Shredder is the reason why we exist.”

“Explain yourself, Don,” Mikey says.

“You know how Shredder forces the utrom to land on Earth, which leads to them creating the mutagen and taking in Hamato Yoshi who Shredder killed because of his connections. But it also led to Splinter finding us. Making us what we are now. So in short, Shredder is the reason we are we. It’s ironic, isn’t it.”

“That's a lot to take in,” Leo says.

“Being that close to related to Shredder makes me feel dirty,” Raph adds.

“Even if Shredder is related to our origin, it is still we that choose our faith,” Splinter says.

“And even if Shredder is still out there. No matter what he throws at us, no matter how he messes with our lives. Nothing will be the most important thing. We are family,” Leo says.

“Ha haha, you’re getting soft, Leo,” Mikey says, while smiling at Leo.

“Keep eating your marshmallows, Mikey. Leo’s got a point,” Raph glares at Mikey and is thrown a marshmallow right into his face.

“Oh, you got it,” Raph says as he takes a running start and tackles Mikey. Casey, Leo and Donnie also join them.

Seb watches from the side lines with Splinter and April.

April looks at Splinter, “It’s definitely a family. Do you think we will ever be able to teach the ‘kids’ some manners? Seb obviously learned them.”

Splinter looks at April, “Miss O’Neil, It was hard enough to teach them the ancient art of ninjitsu. It’s hard enough. I am afraid that I can’t work miracles,” Splinter then pats Seb on the head, “This one was already a miracle in itself.”

Seb laughs as he leans closer to Splinter and continues to watch his brothers fight with Casey.

Seb says to himself, “I hope this never changes.”

Chapter Text

Ever since April’s house blew up, she’s been staying with the turtles. Seb liked having April around and she has been getting more comfortable living with them, a little too comfortable in his older brothers’ opinion. But it’s been fun.

They had finally gotten some peace and quiet, but it came at a cost. The streets were getting more tense since Shredder had ‘died’. The crime rate has been subtle climbing and the foot has been very disorganised.

But the turtle family decided to not think about that. It's movie night.

Casey had promised to show them the greatest movie ever, but it has taken him a while to find it. Enough time for Seb and Mikey to make six bowl of popcorn.

Seb walks out of the kitchen with the popcorn, looking around for Casey, “He’s still not here?”

“Nope, the bonehead is still not here” Raph says.

Donnie chimes in, “Casey's taste in movies has been a hit or a miss. We never know what we are getting into.”

Just as Donnie says that, Casey makes his entrance, “Just something super spectacular. A movie so goongala great they only remade it a gazillion times and this my friends is the original, like me.”

Seb rolls his eyes at the announcement, but takes a bowl of popcorn and a seat. He’s still intrigued to see what Casey brought.

Casey then trips on nothing and the VHS-tapes fly through the air. Luckily Leo is there to make the saving catch.

“Let the movie begin,” Leo grins, while Seb and Mikey clap.

“INCOMING!” Casey jump on the sofa next to April, they look at each other for a second before looking away in embarrassment.

“Hey bonehead, I can’t believe you picked a western,” Raph says.

“I can’t believe it either. This is Rio Cato. I love this movie,” April smiles at Casey who smiles back at her.

“Me too, Isn’t it great how that punk kid challenges-” Before Casey can finish Seb throws a pillow at him.

“NO SPOILERS!”

Everyone quilted down to watch the movie. It was a cowboy movie about an old timer who protects his town and the young newcomer who would die for fame.

The climax of the movie is when the old timer and the newcomer get into a show-off where the grandpa shot the young one.

“Can I pick em or can I take em,” Casye said.

“They sure don’t make them like that anymore,” Leo says.

“I’ll give you credit, this is a good movie. Good to know you still have taste,” Seb says as he finishes his popcorn.

“Oh, thank you”, Casey says proudly.

“Oh no, the popcorn is gone”, Mikey whines.

“I can’t imagine where it all went, Mikey”, Raph says.

“I was hungry, but now I’m really hungry”, Mikey says.

“Maybe it’s time for an, I don’t know, AN ICE CREAM RUN,” Donnie grins.

“It is too dangerous on the surface. The gang activity alone makes it ill adviceable to go,” Splinter says.

“Well be careful, sensei,” Donnie says.

“Yeah and April can show us that new ice cream place,” Seb says as he gets up.

“I will accompany you to make sure you don’t get into mischief. Besides I’m craving a double thick ice cream shake,” Splinter grins at them.

So they went to get ice cream, with Master Splinter, Casey and April. The ride there was uneventful and everyone had gotten their ice creams thanks to April and her working bank account. Seb was drinking his shake in the car, while everyone else was on the outside.

“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream,” Mikey sings while taking his ice cream.

Seb listened to Master Splinter, Donnie and Raph discussing the movie when he felt winds go past him.

Seb turned towards where he felt the winds coming from only to see a man with an oni mask. He was raising his arm and Seb noticed the man was going to throw something sharp towards Leo.

“LEO, BEHIND YOU!” Seb shouted, right as the man threw it. Luckily Leo got it.

“Sebastiano, stay in, do not move unless I say,” Splinter said, while making a sign to stay put. Splinter then took the object from Leo’s hand and inspected it.

“I have seen this mark before. It’s not around here,” Splinter says.

“Is it the foot?” Raph asks.

“No, it’s an invitation to a duel,” Right as Splinter finishes his sentence the same masked man comes back and challenges Leonardo to a duel.

Raph, Donnie and Mikey wouldn’t have allowed Leo to fight alone, but it was against the rules. Seb noticed how Splinter looked rather calm for the situation. Seb had taken out his yari and was ready to attack.

Then the man took out a strange object that created a humanoid looking thing who in turn created a water dome around his family. Seb didn’t move from his spot, now realizing the danger he was in. Seb could see that they were talking, but Seb couldn’t hear what they were talking about.

Nothing good if Seb had to guess.

Seb then saw Leonardo get sucked through the ground, Raph tried to save Leo, but was too late. After that, Seb couldn’t see what was happening, the ball was getting hazy by the second, it seemed to gather smog around itself.

Seb got out of the battle shell and made his way towards the dome. Seb touched the dome, it didn’t hurt nor did it seem to react to Seb touching it. It felt smooth and soft, yet he couldn’t get through it. No matter how hard he tried to push against it or use his yari, the dome would not break. Seb felt panic arise inside of him, he didn’t want to be separated from his family again.

Seb took a deep breath to calm himself down, panicking would not solve anything.

Seb remembers Splinter telling him about glass balls, they have a weak point, you just need to feel it and put pressure on it. Seb remembers how Splinter closed his eyes when he focused and found the weak point.

This thing is not a glass ball, but maybe it could work.

Seb put both of his hands on the barrier and tried to focus his mind only on the barrier.

He got nothing.

The dome has no weak point that could destroy it singlehandedly. It's flowing like water, so if there is any weak point, striking it should be impossible.

He needs to use something else. Seb looks at his hands, they are covered in the water.

Water is the key.

Seb inspacted the dome, noticing that the barrier was mostly constructed from water or it seemed like the main opponent, maybe he could get through it. If he just put his mind into it.

Seb once again focused on the barrier again closing his eyes. He put his hand against the water this time trying to focus on getting through the water. Seb allowed his other senses to go numb as he focused solely on the water.

He opened his spiritual side just like how Splinter had taught him in his childhood, and just then he felt like something had clicked. The next thing he felt was going through something cold. Then when he opened his eyes he saw that he was inside the dome. Seb looked behind him and noticed that he hadn't noticed that the dome got teleported.

“Wow,” Seb said to himself.

---------------------------------------

The battle between the ultimate ninja and Leo continued on, when the familiar barrier ball appeared with one outsider. The ultimate ninja noticed a smaller turtle that was clearly letting its guard down.

A perfect distraction.

The ultimate ninja took advantage of this and aimed one of his knives towards the outsider. It was heading for its neck, but before it could hit the youngling. It got inside the barrier.

Impossible.

The ultimate ninja was shocked, it wasn’t everyday you see somebody get inside a royal barrier that easily. But he couldn’t think about it too much as his duel was still not over.

Since during his moment of distraction Leonardo had managed to uppercut him.

--------------------------------------

When Seb managed to get inside the portal, his family was still watching with horror as Leo was thrown through the bridge. The only person who noticed his presence was the humanoid figure, who raised its eyes in confusion as if it was an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

Seb watched the battle in tense silence. Leo was going to die when he got thrown through the bridge, but thanks to turtle luck he survived and defeated the ultimate ninja.

In a few seconds the barrier was gone and everybody was hugging and congratulating Leo. The ultimate ninja used some form of illusion magic to get the last win, but that attempt was stopped as Daimyo appeared.

“Dad has some weird friends,” Seb says to Casey who looks at him with denial, but then he just seemed to accept that he somehow didn’t see Seb in the dome before.

Seb watched from the sidelines as Daimyo scolded his son for his lack of honor and disappointment, then he praised Leo for his honor and Splinter for raising him well. The Daimyo then returned Leo’s katanas, which had broken during the battle.

Daimyo then straightened his stance as he looked at everyone, “Once, many generations ago, we visited this dimension. People here thought we were gods and took care of us. In turn we taught them ninjutsu. it’s good to see that you have carried our gift with honor,” Daimyo looks at his son in disappointment as he says the next line, “maybe even better than my own son. Good bye, old friend.”

They then watched the Daimyo, ultimate ninja and the humanoid figure leave through a water portal.

“Let’s go home my sons, I think Sebastiano is waiting for us,” Splinter says.

“I’m here dad,” Seb says, making his family and April turn to look at him.

“When did you get here?!” Raph turned around to look at Seb.

“We saw you outside the barrier, how did you get teleported here?” Donnie asked.

“I don’t know, I held on to the dome as it was teleporting I guess. Also it was made of water like things so I kind of just walked through it” Seb shrugged his shoulders, not even sure what he did, but then he remembered something, “also we should hurry, since the car isn't even locked.”

The realization dawned on them as they started to speed up to get to the battle shell, before somebody took it.

Seb thought back to the moment he entered the barrier, his theory of it being made of water was correct and he was most likely lucky to even find the area that was weaker and get inside. He was really thankful for Splinter and his teaching. Without them he would have been screwed.

“Come on, Seb, we need to hurry or the battle shell might be stolen and then Leo’s victory will taste bitter,” Mikey said, while taking Seb's hand, “hurry up!”

Seb nodded, the thoughts about what had happened left his mind, they had more important things, “yeah, I hope we can make it before Donnie’s body count gets higher.”

“That’s the plan, now hurry up!” Raph says.