Work Text:
Donnie paused, fingers lit by the RGB lights of his keyboard. He catalogued all incoming stimuli for a moment. The growing fractal pains in his skull from the bright screen. The dry feeling of his throat and mouth. The fact he’d forgotten to put on music four hours ago. Irrelevant data. Unimportant.
In the sudden silence was the last dying notes of his lab door access panel being hacked by someone he no doubt regretted sharing genetic commonalities with. A brother, primed for the annoying, grating on his senses more than the stiff ache in his spine. He gave one last longing look at the display where his new drone was failing its firmware installation for the fourteenth time.
Today was simply going to be a day of many disappointments.
He kicked out, the smooth glide of his custom chair swivelling him with pinpoint accuracy to face the door. Leaning back, arms folded and eyebrows impassive, he waited for the large heavy panels to begin to part.
Due to recent upgrades and rebalancing of the mechanisms, the actual opening was butter smooth and perfectly silent. Thus he’d added in some audio to play on the overhead speakers to reintroduce appropriate levels of drama. He listened to it now, satisfied in his decision except for in this instance, when it heralded the entrance of a far too inferior being:
Leonardo.
“Is that new?” the prophesied brother asked, peering up at the ceiling as if that was where all answers were located. “I feel like it's new. Did you take it from Jupiter Jim: Revenge of the Accolades?”
Donnie raised one single, pointed, perfect eyebrow. And said nothing.
Leo smiled. A bead of incriminating sweat glistened on his adequately sized forehead. He leaned oh so casually against the doorframe, hand on hip, other hand conveniently out of view. The silence fermented a moment longer.
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
Leo came in immediately.
The action was less surprising than the lack of disappointment Donnie felt. Wait. No. The disappointment was there, it was just lost in the usual background levels of having siblings. Once he factored out the noise he could find the spike.
Donnie ran the calculations and administered the correct amount of sighing. “You are wrong as always, dear brother. It is actually an isolated audio clip from the retrofitted labs featured in Jupiter Jim: Echoes of Planetoids Past.”
Leo nodded along thoughtfully as he sashayed past the various fumehoods and test chambers, arms looped behind his back, before settling predictably in the most annoying spot he could find at the edge of biting distance. At least one of Donnie’s good pens disappeared under the shadowy colossus of Leo’s butt as he hoisted himself onto the desk. “Very stylish. Love the science vibes.”
“Your praise sickens me,” Donnie said promptly, twisting back to his computer since it was obvious the annoyance levels in this lab would not be decreasing anytime soon. He wanted to attempt a fifteenth firmware installation before spending the rest of his afternoon throttling Leo out of view of the cameras. “What do you want?”
“To see my beloved twin and admire his fancy new door sound?”
“Cute. What do you actually want?”
“Your cynicism insults me,” Leo said in what sounded suspiciously like his Donnie voice. He delicately leaned back so his hand nudged a screwdriver slightly out of place. “Maybe I just genuinely want to see how you’re doing.”
“Incorrect. If you were doing that, I would have felt the unforgiving surface of a water bottle hitting my head and some pointed insult about the artistry of my eyebrows. Instead, you have begun this venture with praise.”
Leo digested the infallible logic for a moment, examining the landscape of the metaphorical chess board no doubt. Planning a counter attack, to herd Donnie into some verbal corner where he’d have no choice but to say yes.
Unfortunately for Leo, Donnie was not playing chess today. Instead he was examining the beautiful golden intricacies of a metaphorical scale. Comparable, presumably, to the one Anubis used to judge the weight of souls in the afterlife. Except instead of a feather, there was Donnie’s love and obligation to help his beloved family resting lightly on one side. The other side was simply this: he should’ve absorbed Leo in the ooze womb.
”Have you considered, just once, bothering to schedule your visits in the online calendar made specifically for this purpose?” Donnie asked very slowly.
Leo raised his eyebrowless ridges at surprising speed and velocity. “You made a calendar for brotherly visits?”
“And other general purposes, yes,” Donnie agreed. “But much like the spreadsheet I so graciously offered for logging requests rather than making the long and arduous journey to my labs to bother me in person, my cries for organization and efficiency go once again ignored.”
The resulting eyeroll was not unexpected, but still hurtful. “I’m not doing that.”
“Congratulations: I’m not helping you.”
“Wait, wait, wait, you haven’t even heard what I have to offer you!” Leo backpedalled quickly, shifting pawns and queens and knights around the board. Donnie casually added another weight in favour of umbilical strangulation.
“Gasp. I would surely be excited, if I hadn’t already decided not to help you.” He mashed the delete key a few times, trying a different approach to the code. “Goodbye. Please admire the door closing audio on your way out.”
“Donald,” Leo said, leaning over into biting territory. Donnie kept his focus carefully fixed on his screens, only eyeing the biteability from his periphery. “I think we started off on the wrong Foot-Recruit here. Future pun intended.”
“The calendar, Leon.”
“I will,” Leo said, swallowing something horrifically bitter. “Consider the calendar. If you consider my… question. A simple inquiry. A hypothesis if you will.”
Donnie processed that nonsense with a sense of calm that Splinter would be proud of. He only considered biting. Then he reconsidered the current standing of the scale. Then he reconsidered considering biting. His teeth gnashed. “As if you know what a hypothesis is–”
“You will have blackmail over me.”
The typing stopped. Fingers hovering over the RGB lights of the keyboard. Leo was not looking at him, staring at the floor, his hand gripping the edge of the table. It could just be for effect, another act to lead Donnie into making the wrong move. He couldn’t see the angle though. All he could see was the opportunity for blackmail. An opportunity he would never pass up.
He yanked out the cord from the drone and pulled the whole device onto his lap. Running a hand over the smooth carapace, he swivelled to face Leo. “State your case.”
“Oh so now I have your attention,” Leo muttered. “You can’t tell dad about this.”
An excellent start. “It will remain to be seen what I do or do not tell dad. We can schedule a follow up meeting about it in the online calendar.”
“You are my beloved brother,” Leo said. “And I love you so very much. I should’ve absorbed you in the womb.”
“We’re mutated turtles,” Donnie said dismissively. “There was never a womb involved.”
“Draxum has literally called those pod things wombs multiple times in front of us.”
“You are thinking of mutation incubators.”
“I’m not seeing a difference.”
“Your case, Leon.”
“Right.” Leo breathed in very deeply, eyes scrunched. Donnie would almost be concerned, if Leo was not still sitting on his good pen. “So you know how me and Cass were going on a boba run?”
“I am familiar,” Donnie said, because he had indeed been doing his usual amount of eavesdropping.
“Well we did get boba,” Leo continued. “And of course I got my beloved twin his favourite: tapioca pearl milk tea, with no tapioca pearls and no flavouring.”
The hand that Leo had been conveniently concealing since he entered the lab finally made its appearance. Donnie did not consider it surprising. Leo had started experimenting with postures that kept his hands concealed at around six years of age, managing to be groundbreakingly suspicious. Every time Splinter asked after it, however, Leo’s hands always proved to be empty. So Splinter stopped asking. So Leo stopped keeping his hands empty. Donnie wasn’t sure if the rest of his brothers were aware, but when Leo did his usual posturing with one or more hands oh so conveniently out of line of sight, there was a 13.7% chance he was hiding something. Donnie had done the math himself, using the multiple camera angles available in the lair to verify. That is to say, Donnie was not surprised by the appearance of the boba tea.
He graciously accepted the offering anyway.
The flavoured milk tea with tapioca pearls was beautifully unflavoured and free of tapioca pearls. He confirmed it thoroughly, taking his time to sip and smack his lips. “Go on.”
Leo rolled his eyes, and Donnie noted that he was missing his own boba tea. Hands empty. Exposed. He looked tired. Did he sleep last night? Donnie wanted to verify but years of experience taught him it was a bad idea to review camera footage of his brothers while they were still in the room.
“There were some… mild unplanned complications,” Leo began carefully. “During the acquisition of the boba. Nothing interesting, no need to look into it, just some security and street cameras that would benefit from having no recorded footage of the last several hours. Also, how do you feel about hacking into police and possibly government databases?”
“I was wondering what part of that was going to be a question,” Donnie mused. “Care to add the hypothesis as well?”
“Hypothesis: You love me.”
“That remains to be seen.” Donnie spun around as the affronted gasp sounded behind him. He thought for a moment, petting his drone, sipping his plain milk tea. “I will need more details. To accurately assess the situation, you understand.”
“The usual boba place will be fine,” Leo reassured too quickly. “You’ll be able to order from there again in no time once they fix all the everything.”
Donnie had, until this point, incredibly graciously not mentioned the fact that the milk tea in his hands was not in fact from his favourite place. As a courtesy. He was polite. He was forgiving. He was pleased Leo was finally acknowledging the horrendous mistake in the room. What a kind and benevolent sibling Donnie was. He held up his plastic takeout cup to the light so he could inspect all sides of the bastardized labelling. “Interesting. What else?”
“You know, I think that covers everything.”
“In detail, Nard. What happened?”
Leo audibly grimaced. “Our beloved Cassandra has unaddressed anger issues and access to mystic weaponry… and our beloathed Stockboy has learned how to befriend those leftover paper Foot goons. So. You know.”
“And what happened wasn’t your fault?”
“Definitely not.”
“No potential escalation? Gloating or showboating or name-calling?”
“Doesn’t sound like me.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
Sweat glistened on Leo’s eternally eyebrow-less brow. “Nope.”
“Mmm,” Donnie hummed in consideration and, without breaking eye contact, carefully opened up a minimized application on his computer. A side project he’d been working on this afternoon. Captured camera footage of his favourite boba place appeared on screen, the recording snipped from a time of day Leo no doubt wished to not exist. “Then let us review the evidence.”
“Ah,” Leo said. “You knew.”
Donnie smiled. Slow and sinister, like he’s been practising, until it pulled smugly at the edges of his cheeks. He leaned back, satiated. “I know everything, my dear twin. Would you like to start this conversation over again?”
“I got you boba.”
“You did.”
“I trusted you.”
“You did.”
Leo breathed out once. Quiet, sharp, precise. “I can get you many boba.”
“And what do you want in return?”
“I can’t let Cass go to jail.”
“Ah, but you portaled her out of the back of one of many government cars. Surely she is no longer in danger of going to prison?”
Leo groaned, shoving his face into his hands. “You say that but she did scream her entire name at them. I kept telling her to call herself Stockboy but she wouldn’t go for it.”
“And now she’s a felon.”
Leo nodded solemnly. “And now she’s a felon.”
Donnie spun around in his chair once more before settling. “Well, Leon, I have good news for you. I can grant every one of your wishes and more. We simply need to work out an agreeable price.”
“You’re not going to tell dad about this?”
“Dad, Raph, April,” Donnie listed. “I’m not telling a great many people about this. Assuming of course that you buy my silence as well.”
The chess game was back in play. Donnie allowed it, now that he was in a favourable position. Circling Leo’s king in an annoying and taunting manner. Leo’s eyes sharpened as he realized it too. Studying the board, finding out what Donnie truly wanted.
The answer?
Donnie had literally already forgotten about the entire thing before Leo brought it up. Of course he’s been alerted when it happened and watched the livestream in a sort of morbid fascination that one might watch a slow motion car crash. Then his automated programs got to work chewing up all the evidence, voiding all footage, bricking all the phones in the vicinity, and intercepting all reports from those government agents about terrorism and monsters and other dumb things. He used to only go through this effort for his brothers, but April got on his case about the importance of clean civilian records so he’d extended the same courtesy to her and Casandra, even if the latter hadn’t yet noticed or cared.
Donnie did not tell Leo about this, however. Because now Leo had turned it into a thing, and Donnie was getting excited by the prospect of this relatively mundane event apparently being a thing. The blackmail. The extortion. The low and petty road. He was practically salivating at the thought.
“I will not complain about your choice or volume of music for the next two weeks ,” Leo began. A basic first move and an undersell. It was the equivalent to saying hello.
Donnie reciprocated just as blandly. “That’s all?”
“A month,” Leo offered. The timeline for favours switching to a month was intriguing. Leo’s mind must weigh guilty indeed.
“And…?” Donnie asked, just to see how far the current direction would push.
A grimace. “And I’ll do your chores.”
“For a month,” Donnie echoed. “I suppose you’ll give me your desserts as well. Announce my entrance grandly at the door. Lie to Raph and Mikey about my illicit undertakings. Please, Nardo, we’ve been at this since we were kids. Give me something interesting.”
“You wouldn’t let Cass go to prison,” Leo began, a lopsided grin to try to disarm while his king wiggled between the cracks.
Donnie kept him firmly pinned down. “You of all brothers know exactly what I would or wouldn’t do, and in this case you know I very much would. I am tolerant of many things, but I am least tolerant of boredom. I’ve yet to see it be worth my while spending the time to keep Cass’s record clean when I could better spend it watching Raph chew you out into the dirt.”
Leo opened his mouth, then closed it again, and Donnie watched it flap wishing he could take a picture. Oh right, he could. There were cameras everywhere.
“So,” Donnie continued, delicate-touch soft. “Where is your creativity? Give me something interesting.”
Leo stilled. He stared at Donnie for a long, long moment. Donnie refused to blink first. His brother had entered this lab knowing he would be bargaining and so he must bargain. Donnie had named his price. Leo must name what he’s willing to pay.
“Uranium.”
Nevermind, Donnie blinked first. “Pardon?”
“You always talk about how much you want uranium,” Leo said, flapping a hand dismissively. His posture shifted into something casual. A salesman confident of his product. “I can get you uranium.”
“You…” Donnie swallowed. “How could you possibly get me uranium?”
A smug, satisfied smile. “I’m the face man, remember? You get me clearance, a counterfeit entry badge or a reason to be there, anything works, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“How?”
“Bluffing, my dear twin. Pure unrestrained lying and confidence, the likes of which you could never hope to achieve.”
Donnie might be salivating. It was ridiculous. It was impossible. It was Leo. He talked his way into being the mayor of the Hidden City before just so he could change Draxum’s bounty picture to that of a baby goat. The Hidden City didn’t even have a mayor.
“Raph would never let me put you in danger,” Donnie said, wavering and Leo knew it.
Leo leaned back in, propping his head on his hand. “Why would anyone need to know about any of this? All this felony and uranium business is just between the two of us, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Then I don’t see the problem.”
Donnie should definitely not put his dear beloved precious brother in danger. He should hold Leo close and cherish him and not lose him to government agents forever because Leo was fucking stupid at inconvenient times. But. Uranium.
“Do we have a deal?” An extended hand.
There was no universe in which Donnie didn’t take it. “I–”
“DONNIE WE HAVE A PROBLEM!”
Before Donnie could blink, his lab doors were wrenched open with enough force to knock them off the balancing mechanism, and the retro sci-fi door opening audio drowned in the horrific screeching of metal. It distracted him from Leo shrieking and falling off the desk, but Donnie could review that footage later. He was too preoccupied by the overwhelming chokehold of panic-stink mixed with just a hint of genuine fear-stink.
“Raph, what–?”
“Donnie, listen to me,” Raph was already in front of him and grabbing him by the shoulders. “I love you no matter what and if you can’t then that’s okay, but I’m going to need a really big favour from you here and I’m really going to need you to try your best or at least try.”
“What?” Donnie repeated, distracted briefly as he made eye contact with Mikey who was clinging to Raph’s shell for dear life.
“Raph’s not panicking,” Raph said, which was not what anybody had asked. “Raph is calm and collected about this and I need you to be too.”
“I am… calm?” Donnie said hesitantly. He was not a turtle species known for being able to retreat into its shell, but his head was making a valiant attempt.
Leo’s hand appeared somewhere over Raph’s arm, clawing his way into view. Mikey helped haul him up, so he could reach far enough to pat Raph on the face for attention. “I think Donnie’s going to need you to use your words, big guy.”
“I am using words,” Raph said feverishly. “I am saying a lot of words here!”
“Try more descriptive words?”
Raph opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and Donnie was able to use a robot arm to peel each and every one of Raph’s fingers from his skin before his brother found the words to speak again. “I just. I don’t want to freak you out or put any pressure on you, Donnie, but this is really important.”
“I’ll handle it?” Donnie offered tentatively.
“Raph, he can handle it,” Leo assured with another pat, delicately sprawling himself into Raph’s arms so he’d have something else to hold onto that was not Donnie. Raph responded by absentmindedly holding him hamburger style.
“It’s about Casey,” Raph began, which caused Donnie to lift a perfect eyebrow and Leo to make a sound akin to the squeaky toy he was being rightfully treated as. “She, uh, walked into the living room just now and offered us boba and said she fought the government for it? And Raph asked some follow up questions and um.”
Raph took one very large breath and let it out, holding Leo carefully while he looked Donnie directly in the eye again.
“I think she’s a felon now, Donnie, and I’m going to need you to hack the government so she doesn’t go to prison. I–I know that’s asking a lot and it’s okay if you can’t I’ll understand, but we really need to try here. We can’t let Casey be taken away from us. We just started being a family with her and– and–”
The waterworks were beginning, which Donnie was not a fan of, and Leo was too subdued to be anything about. Mikey tried to reach to comfort, but suddenly had to hold on tight to Raph’s shell as Raph reeled back to give a large sniffle. He covered his face with one massive arm, unable to look at his brothers.
“Raph–”
“It's okay,” Raph croaked. “It’ll be okay. You don’t– If it’s too dangerous you don’t have too. We’ll keep Casey safe.”
“Raph, wait–”
Fuck. Donnie saw his brother cry and saw his uranium dreams circling the drain. He knew what he had to do. He hated it. He really didn’t want to. He had been about to get everything he’d ever asked for. Which was uranium.
The intricate golden scale shifted. The need for uranium simply wasn’t heavy enough. Not in comparison to helping his current second favourite brother.
“Cassandra’s not a felon, Raphael,” Donnie said with great, great, great reluctance. The words tasted like broken dreams and uninteresting ions on his tongue. He found himself leaning back so he could pinch the ridge of his nose and coincidentally not look at anyone. “She never was. I already took care of it.”
“You what?” Both Raph and Leo asked in very different tones of voice.
Donnie very deliberately did not look at hamburger Leo. “I took care of it. There’s no evidence of anything she did. If the government looks, they’ll find she never existed to begin with. You're welcome.”
“Donnie, I–” Raph blinked several times, tears falling onto Donnie’s beautiful laboratory floors. “How? Half the city was a witness.”
Donnie leaned forward, placing a hand on Raph’s shoulder. Mikey placed a hand on top of his hand. “Raph. Raphael. My dearest brother. Whatever gave you the impression that I’d never hacked the government before? They are my favourite form of entertainment.”
“What,” Leo said again, but Donnie was not talking to the hamburger.
Instead he kicked off Raph so he could expertly twist himself towards his computer, hitting a shortcut to bring up his full access of all government databases. He gestured broadly to the information sprawling lazily across the screens.
“If you will behold—and thank you for beholding—you will see here everything the government sees, and what the government sees is not us. They have never heard of any sort of mutant menace, and they have no knowledge of any Cassandra Jones.
Raph was gaping, which meant he was impressed. That was his impressed-stink, Donnie knew. Definitely not the tinges of horror-stink.
“Wait wait wait,” Leo spoke up, flailing until he managed to smack Donnie’s shell. “There were government agents physically there. They saw the whole thing! Who’s to say they’re not snitching?”
“Excellent question, Leoburger,” Donnie said with what he hoped was a suitably uncanny smile. It might actually be good to bring this point up, while he was being oh so helpful to his brothers. “Unfortunately, since none of you will allow the lethal option, I had to go non-lethal. All calls from the agents were intercepted and they received communications from fake superiors telling them it would be handled and was also so classified they could literally never speak of it again.”
“Wow, Donnie, that’s–”
“Of course!” Donnie plowed on. “If we wanted to be truly thorough about it, and lethality is still off the table, I have an experimental neurotoxic agent that will chew up all memories of the last thirty-six hours. Side effects include misplaced fear responses, the inability to become a taxi driver in London, and newfound romantic inclinations toward fellow amnesiac coworkers which may or may not ruin some marriages, but I would hardly consider that a deal-breaker for absolute annihilation of hippocampal network function. And other functions.”
“Donnie,” Raph said. “No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“Just once.”
“Not a chance.”
Donnie sighed very, very loudly. “I am going to schedule a follow up meeting about this in the calendar.”
“You know I’m never going to look at the calendar, right?” Raph asked, which was hurtful, but also the panic-stink was abating, so maybe it was worth it to be able to breathe deeply again.
Then the hamburger spoke up. “Hey Donald, why do you have an entire subsystem dedicated to someone called Larry?”
“Larry Jenold,” Donnie blurted eagerly, brain practically bluescreening for a moment at the sudden rush of a special interest. He flapped his hands as he whipped back to his screens and highlighted various camera views of the same mediocre government man, tracking him throughout his workday. Noninvasively. “A side project. A hobby if you will. He’s my favourite.”
“You have a favourite government agent?” Raph asked after a normal length pause.
“Doesn’t everyone? Larry here was severely under-qualified when he was hired and I get to watch him stumble through every email draft and work conversation. He is my muse, my Trojan horse, my beautiful soul who does not know the devil on his shoulder.”
“What–”
“He is single as of now but I’ve been thinking of pairing him with the overly verbose gentleman from five offices down the hall. Together these two have the potential to create a government agent so truly normal at writing emails that it would astound the senses.”
“Oooh,” Leo said very appreciatively. “I love the Sims.”
“Right, I’m shutting this down,” Raph said, and immediately pulled the nearest plug. It was for the microwave, but having encountered situations like this before, Donnie’s computers recognized the threat and ran a program that played a sad noise and turned off their monitors. The great unplugging rampage was a dark and tumultuous time. It would not be repeated again.
“Ouch,” Donnie said. “You wound me.”
“You need a hobby.”
“The government is my hobby.”
“No more government,” Raph snapped, finally putting Leo down to the side and patting his head. “Listen, I’m really grateful for what you did for Casey. Hacking the government is really important. But I’m going to need you to leave them alone now and go outside and terrorize the ants or something.”
“The government is my antfarm.”
Raph blinked very very slowly at him.
Shit. Raph was going to make him do the seminar again. “Donnie, we’re going to do the seminar again.” Donnie hated the seminar. There were too many complicated feelings about ethical experimentation and humane treatment of subjects. Participants. He meant to say participants.
“What about Leo?”
“He can join you. Don’t think I didn’t hear that comment about the Sims.”
“That’s it?”
Raph scrunched his brow. “What else is there?”
Donnie went to list out the overencumbering abundance of what else there all was, but his tongue fell still just in time. Critical information came into light in the form of a realization of one simple fact: Raph didn’t know. Oh wow, Raph didn’t know. Cassandra must not have told him the other half of the incident which meant…
Leo’s eyes were on him. Glaring, begging, threatening, who cared. Donnie could do anything. He could rat Leo out right this moment and achieve glorious sibling superiority. He could become the favourite. He could have anything. Extortion, blackmail, satisfaction.
Uranium.
Donnie did not look at Leo. He didn’t look at Raph either. Instead he sighed and flung a hand heavenward and bemoaned in his best voice, “What hasn’t Leon done? Getting me a drink from a far more inferior boba place... The milk tea isn’t as bland, Raphael! Do you know what a crime that is?” He peaked out at Raph once his performance was done. He’d meant it, too. He would be visiting Leo in the dead of night later to discuss this drink order in depth.
“Oh my god,” Leo said. All at once the animation returned to his limbs as he threw himself dramatically back against the desk as if it were a fainting couch. “You try a new boba place once and you never hear the end of it.”
Raph sighed over their heads. “Still not a crime, Dee. Not exactly intervention worthy. I mean seminar worthy.”
“So it is an intervention!”
Raph sweated. “I never said that.”
“You literally just–!”
“That’s enough lab time for all of us,” Raph decided, grabbing each of his brothers and leaving. “All this science is bad for the brain. Let’s go watch some mindless television.”
Donnie found himself tucked under the arm hotdog-style, and decided to use this time to ruminate and glare at Leo. Leo smiled back. Donnie desperately needed to bite him.
“Huh,” Raph said as they reached the living room. Cassandra was on the couch, legs folded, using a sai to stab tapioca pearls out of her drink cup with a kind of serenity that came with not knowing or caring about being a felon. “Where’d he go?”
Donnie and Leo were set on their respective feets before being forgotten about, and Donnie used that opportunity to immediately shuffle subtly to Leo’s side. “We need to arrange a discussion.”
“Do we?” Leo hummed. “I thought we were watching television.”
Donnie twitched. “The uranium, Leon.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The side of the scale favouring Leo’s demise was about to break new ground and sink below the surface never to be seen again. “Raph doesn’t know what you did.”
“What I did has not resulted in a beloved new family member being a felon,” Leo said bemusedly. “So I’m not seeing anything here that’s worth uranium.”
“A lifetime of doctored footage? All the tech you could want? My entire expertise?” Donnie asked in growing consternation. “Is that not worth it to you?”
Leo smiled, wide and pitying. “Oh Donnie, that’s basic stuff. If you want the Leo experience, you are going to have to give me something interesting.”
Donnie swallowed tightly. He eyed Raph still hunting around the room, lifting up the couch with Cassandra on top before putting it back down. He took another step closer to Leo. “You can play it.”
“Hmm?”
“I’ll let you play the Sims.”
All at once Leo’s body stilled. His fingers twitched. He turned to look at Donnie. “You know I do love the Sims.”
Donnie waited. Leo looked considering for a moment, before he slung an arm around Donnie’s shoulder and leaned in with his full weight. Donnie withstood it easily after so many years of practice.
“Listen,” Leo said carefully. “If you let me plan the wedding of Larry Jenold, I will get you all the uranium that your heart desires. That doesn’t kill me.”
Donnie smiled, slow and satisfied, offering a hand just as Raph turned to them.
“Hey do you—stop making dark bargains right in front of Raph—Do you see Mikey anywhere? I thought I left him right here in the living room.”
Donnie and Leo switched their attention over to him just as Mikey popped up from over Raph’s shoulder. “Hey Raph–!”
“FUCK!” Raph shrieked, launching Mikey into the air pinball style. Cassandra, misunderstanding the situation but always ready for violence, hockey-stick slammed their brother into a home run. Raph went for the dive, missed, collided with the wall, and Mikey pinged off the on-ramp and popped out of his shell in time to land with a perfect ten points. Donnie clapped appreciatively and used a robot arm to shake Leo’s hand out of view of the cameras. “Deal, I’ll add it to the online calendar.”
“I hate the online calendar.”
Thus, the dark bargain was complete.